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CREATION 
OR EVOLUTION? 



A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY, 



BY y" 

GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS. 




NEW YORK: 
r>. APPLETON" AND COMPANY, 

1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 

1887. 






Copyright, 188T. 
By GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS. 



e^ 



a 



TO 

LEWIS A. SAYEE, M. D., 

WHOSE PEOFESSIONAL EMINENCE IS EEOOGNIZED 

IN BOTH HEMISPHEEES, 

WHOSE SKILL AS A SUEGEON 

SriTEEING KIJMANITT GEATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES, 

TO WHOSE ANATOMICAL LEAENING 

THE AUTHOE IS LAEGELT INDEBTED, 

AND OF WHOSE FEIENDSHIP HE IS PEOUD, 

^XB §ODk 
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 



'^ Dost thou not hnoiv, my new astronomer I 
Earth, turning from the sun, hrings night to man 9 
Man, turning from his God, hrings endless night ; 
Where thou canst read no morals, find no friend, 
Amend no manners, and expect no peace.^^ 

young's night thoughts. 



PEEFACE 



Perhaps it is expected of a writer who steps out of 
the sphere of his ordinary pursuits, and deals with such a 
subject as that which is treated in this work, that he will 
account for his so doing. It is not necessary for me to say 
that no class of men can have a monopoly in any subject. 
But I am quite willing to take my readers into my confi- 
dence so far as to state how I came to write this book. 

Most men, who have a special pursuit, find the necessity 
for recreation of some kind. Some take it in one way, and 
some in another. It has been my habit through life to seek 
occasional relief from the monotony of professional voca- 
tions in intellectual pursuits of another character. Having 
this habit — which I have found by experience has no tend- 
ency to lessen one's capacity for the daties of a profession, 
or one's relish of its occupations — I some years ago took 
up the study of the modern doctrine of animal evolution. 
Until after the death of the late Mr. Charles Darwin, I 
had not given a very close attention to this subject. The 
honors paid to his memory, and due to his indefatigable 
research and extensive knowledge, led me to examine his 
^'Descent of Man" and his ^^ Origin of Species," both of 



viii PREFACE. 

which I studied with care, and I trust with candor. I was 
next induced to examine the writings of Mr. Herbert 
Spencer on the subject of evolution, with which I had also 
been previously unacquainted except in a general way. I 
was a good deal surprised at the extent of Mr. Spencer's 
reputation as a thinker, and by the currency which his pe- 
culiar philosophy has had in this country, where it has led, 
among the young and inexperienced, as well as among 
older persons, to very incorrect habits of reasoning on sub- 
jects of the highest importance. The result of my studies 
of these writers is the present book. I have written it be- 
cause I have seen, or believe that I have seen, where the 
conflict arises between some of the deductions of modern 
science and the principles which ought to regulate not 
only religious belief, but belief in anything that is not 
open to the direct observation of our senses. But I trust 
that I shall not be understood as having written for the 
purpose of specially defending the foundations of religious 
belief. This is no official duty of mine. How theologians 
manage, or ought to manage, the argument which is to 
convince men of the existence and methods of God, it is 
not for me to say. But a careful examination of the new 
philosophy has convinced me that those who are the spe- 
cial teachers of religious truth have need of great caution in 
the admissions or concessions which they make, when they 
undertake to reconcile some of the conclusions of modern 
scientists with belief in a Creator. I do not here speak of 
the Biblical account of the creation, but I speak of that 
belief in a Creator which is to be deduced from the phe- 
nomena of nature. "While there are naturalists, scientists, 



PREFACE. 



IX 



and philosophers at the present day, whose speculations do 
not exclude the idea of a Supreme Being, there are others 
whose theories are entirely inconsistent with a belief in a 
personal God, the Creator and Grovernor of the uniyerse. 
Moreoyer, although there are great differences in this re- 
spect between the different persons who accept eyolution 
in some form, the whole doctrine of the development of 
distinct species out of other species makes demands upon 
our credulity which are irreconcilable with the principles 
of belief by which we regulate, or ought to regulate, our ac- 
ceptance of any new matter of belief. The principles of 
belief which we apply in the ordinary affairs of life are 
those which should be applied to scientific or philosophical 
theories ; and inasmuch as the judicial method of reason- 
ing upon facts is at once the most satisfactory and the 
most in accordance with common sense, I haye here under- 
taken to apply it to the eyidence which is supposed to es- 
tablish the hypothesis of animal eyolution, in contrast with 
the hypothesis of special creations. 

I am no ecclesiastic. I advance no arguments in favor of 
one or another interpretation of the Scriptures about which 
there is controversy among Christians. While I firmly be- 
lieve that God exists, and that he has made a revelation 
to mankind, whereby he has given us direct assurance of 
immortality, I do not know that this belief disqualifies me 
from judging, upon proper principles of evidence, of the 
soundness of a theory which denies that he specially creat- 
ed either the body or the mind of man. How far the hy- 
pothesis of eyolution, by destroying our belief that God 
specially created us, tends to negative any purpose for 



X PREFACE. 

which we can suppose him to have made to us a revelation 
of our immortality, it is for the theologian to consider. 
For myself, I am not conscious that in examining the 
theory of evolution I have been influenced by my belief 
in what is called revealed religion. I have, at all events, 
studiously excluded from the argument all that has been 
inculcated by the Hebrew or the Christian records as au- 
thorized or inspired teachings, and have treated the Mo- 
saic account of the creation like any other hypothesis of 
the origin of man and the other animals. The result of 
my study of the hypothesis of evolution is, that it is an in- 
genious but delusive mode of accounting for the existence 
of either the body or the mind of man ; and that it em- 
ploj^s a kind of reasoning which no person of sound judg- 
ment would apply to anything that might affect his wel- 
fare, his happiness, his estate, or his conduct in the prac- 
tical affairs of life. 

He who would truly know what the doctrine of evo- 
lution is, and to what it leads, must literally begin at the 
beginning. He must free his mind from the cant of ag- 
nosticism and from the cant of belief. He must refuse to 
accept dogmas on the authority of any one, be they the 
dogmas of the scientist, or of the theologian. He must 
learn that his mental nature is placed under certain 
laws, as surely as his corporeal structure ; and he must 
cheerfully obey the necessities which compel him to ac- 
cept some conclusions and to reject others. Keeping his 
reasoning powers in a well-balanced condition, he must 
prove all things, holding fast to that which is in conform- 
ity with sound deduction, and to that alone. But all per- 



PEEFACE. xi 

sons may not be able to afford the time to pursue truth in 
this way, or may not have the facilities for the requisite 
research. It seemed to me, therefore, that an effort to do 
for them what they can not do for themselves would be 
acceptable to a great many people. 

It may be objected that the imaginary philosopher 
whom I have introduced in some of my chapters under 
the name of Sophereus, or the searcher after wisdom, de- 
bating the doctrines of evolution with a supposed disciple 
of that school, whom I have named Kosmicos, is an im- 
possible person. It may perhaps be said that the concep- 
tion of a man absolutely free from all dogmatic religious 
teaching, from all bias to any kind of belief, and yet hav- 
ing as much knowledge of various systems of belief as I 
have imputed to this imaginary person, would in modern 
society be the conception of an unattainable character. 
My answer to this criticism would be that I felt myself at 
liberty to imagine any kind of character that would suit 
my purpose. How successfully I have carried out the 
idea of a man in mature life entirely free from all pre- 
conceived opinions, and forming his beliefs upon princi- 
ples of pure reason, it is for my readers to judge. With 
regard to the other interlocutor in the dialogues, I hope 
it is not necessary for me to say that I do not impute all 
of his opinions or arguments to the professors of the evo- 
lution school, or to any section of it. He is a representa- 
tive of the effects of some of their teachmgs, but not an 
individual portrait. But as, for the purposes of the an- 
tagonism, it was expedient to put into the mouth of this 
person whatever can be said in favor of the hypothesis of 



xii PREFACE. 

evolution, it became necessary to make him represent the 
dogmatic side of the theory; and thus to make the col- 
lision and contrast between the minds of the two debaters 
as strong as I could. Controversial discussion in the 
form of debate has been used from the time of Plato. 
While I have adopted a method, I have not presumed to 
imitate its great exemplars. But for the value of that 
method I shall presently cite weighty testimony. It was 
a relief to me to resort to it after having pursued the 
subject in the more usual form of discussion ; and in- 
deed it forced itself upon me as a kind of necessity, be- 
cause it seemed the fairest way of presenting what could 
be said on both sides of the question. I hope it may have 
the good fortune to keep alive the interest of the reader, 
after he has perused the previous chapters. 

One disadvantage of all positive writing or discourse 
is that there is no one to confute, to contradict, or to 
maintain the negative. At the bar, and in some public 
assemblies, there is an antagonist ; and truth is elicited 
by the collision. But in didactic writing, especially on 
a philosophical topic, it is best to introduce an antago- 
nist, and to make him speak in his own person. Two 
of the best thinkers of our time have forcibly stated the 
advantage — the necessity, in short — of personal debate. 
Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his essay on Liberty, observes 
that — 

"The loss of so important an aid to the intelligent 
and living apprehension of a truth as is afforded by the 
necessity of explaining it to or defending it against op- 
ponents, though not sufficient to outweigh, is no trifling 



PREFACE. xiii 

drawback from the benefits of its universal recognition. 
Where this advantage can not be had, I confess I should 
like to see the teachers of mankind endeavoring to pro- 
vide a substitute for it ; some contrivance for making the 
difficulties of the question as present to the learner's con- 
sciousness as if they were pressed upon him by a dissen- 
tient champion eager for his conversion. 

*^But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, 
they have lost those they formerly had. The Socratic 
dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues 
of Plato, were a contrivance of this description. They 
were essentially a discussion of the great questions of life 
and philosophy, directed with consummate skill to the 
purpose of convincing any one, who had merely adopted 
the commonplaces of received opinion, that he did not 
understand the subject — ^that he as yet attached no defi- 
nite meaning to the doctrines he professed, in order that, 
becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the 
way to attain a stable belief, resting on a clear apprehen- 
sion both of the meaning of doctrines and of their evi- 
dence. The school disputations of the middle ages had 
a similar object. They were intended to make sure that 
the pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary 
correlation) the opinion opposed to it, and could enforce 
the grounds of one and confute those of the other. The 
last-mentioned contests had, indeed, the incurable defect 
that the premises appealed to were taken from authority, 
not from reason ; and as a discipline to the mind they 
were in every respect inferior to the powerful dialectics 
which formed the intellects of the *Socratici viri.' But 



xiv PREFACE. 

the modern mind owes far more to both than it is gener- 
ally willing to admit ; and the present modes of instruc- 
tion contain nothing which in the smallest degree supplies 
the place either of the one or of the other. ... It is the 
fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic — 
that which points out weakness in theory or errors in 
practice, without establishing positive truths. Such nega- 
tive criticism would indeed be poor enough as an ulti- 
mate result, but as a means to attaining any positive 
knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it can not be 
valued too highly ; and until people are again systemati- 
cally trained to it there will be few great thinkers, and a 
low general average of intellect in any but the mathe- 
matical and physical departments of speculation. On 
any other subject no one's opinions deserve the name of 
knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced upon 
him by others, or gone through of himself, the same 
mental process which would have been required of him 
in carrying on an active controversy with opponents." 

Mr. Grote, in his admirable work on "Plato and the 
other Companions of Socrates," has the following passage : 

"Plato is usually extolled by his admirers as the cham- 
pion of the Absolute — of unchangeable forms, immutable 
truth, objective necessity, cogent and binding on every 
one. He is praised for having refuted Protagoras, who 
can find no standard beyond the individual recognition 
and belief of his own mind or that of some one else. 
There is no doubt that Plato often talks in that strain, 
but the method followed in his dialogues, and the general 
principles of methods which he lays down here as well as 



PKEFACE. XV 

elsewhere, point to a directly opposite conclusion. Of this 
the Phgedrus is a signal instance. Instead of the extreme 
of generality, it proclaims the extreme of speciality. The 
objection which the Socrates of the Phsedrus advances 
against the didactic efficacy of written discourse is founded 
on the fact that it is the same to all readers — that it takes 
no cognizance of the differences of individual minds nor 
of the same mind at different times. Socrates claims for 
dialectic debate the valuable privilege that it is constant 
action and reaction between two individual minds — an 
appeal by the inherent force and actual condition of each 
to the like elements in the other— an ever-shifting pres- 
entation of the same topics, accommodated to the measure 
of intelligence and cast of emotion in the talkers and at 
the moment. The individuality of each mind — both ques- 
tioner and respondent — is here kept in view as the govern- 
ing condition of the process. ISTo two minds can be ap- 
proached by the same road or by the same interrogation. 
The questioner can not advance a step except by the ad- 
mission of the respondent. Every respondent is the meas- 
ure to himself. He answers suitably to his own belief; 
he defends by his own suggestions ; he yields to the press- 
ure of contradiction and inconsistency when he feels them, 
and not before. Each dialogist is (to use the Protagorean 
phrase) the measure to himself of truth and falsehood, 
according as he himself believes it. Assent or dissent, 
whichever it may be, springs only from the free working 
of the individual mind in its actual condition then and 
there. It is to the individual mind alone that appeal is 
made, and this is what Protagoras asks for. 



L 



xvi PREFACE. 

" We thus find, in Plato's philosophical character, two 
extreme opposite tendencies and opposite poles co-existent. 
We must recognize them both, but they can never be 
reconciled ; sometimes he obeys and follows the one, some- 
times the other. 

*^If it had been Plato's purpose to proclaim and im- 
pose upon every one something which he called ^ Absolute 
Truth,' one and the same alike imperative upon all, he 
would best proclaim it by preaching or writing. To 
modify this * Absolute,' according to the yarieties of the 
persons addressed, would divest it of its intrinsic attribute 
and excellence. If you pretend to deal with an Absolute, 
you must turn away your eyes from all diversity of appre- 
hending intellects and believing subjects." 

With such testimony to the value of dialectic debate, 
I hope that my adoption of it as a method will be regarded 
as something better than an affectation. 

Mr. Spencer, in one of his works,* referring to and 
quoting from Berkeley's ^^ Dialogues of Hylas and Philo- 
laus," observes that "imaginary conversation affords great 
facilities for gaining a victory. When you can put into 
an adversary's mouth just such replies as suit your pur- 
pose, there is little difficulty in reaching the desired con- 
clusion." I have not written to gain a victory; and, 
indeed, I am quite aware that it would be impossible to 
gain one over those with whom I can have no common 
ground of reasoning. In the imaginary conversations in 
this work, I have taken great care not to put into the 

* " Principles of Psychology," vol. i, p. 336. 



PREFACE. xvii 

month of the supposed representative of the doctrine of 
evolution anything that Avould suit my own purpose ; and, 
in every instance in which I have represented him as rely- 
ing on the authority of Mr. Darwin or of Mr. Spencer, I 
have either made him quote the words or have made him 
state the positions as I suppose they must be understood, 
and have referred the reader to the proper page in the 
works of those writers. 

And here I will render all honor to the admirable can- 
dor with which Mr. Darwin discussed objections to his 
theory which have been propounded by others, and sug- 
gested further difficulties himself. If I do not pay the 
same tribute to Mr. Spencer, the reason will be found in 
those portions of my work in which I have had occasion 
to call in question his methods of reasoning. 

Some repetition of facts and arguments will be found 
in the following pages in the different aspects in which 
the subject is treated. This has been intentional. When 
the tribunal that is addressed is a limited and special one, 
and is composed of a high order of minds accustomed to 
deal with such a science, for example, as jurisprudence, he 
who undertakes to produce conviction can afford to use 
condensation. He seldom has to repeat what he has once 
said ; and often, the more compact his argument, the 
more likely it will be to command assent if it is clear as 
well as close. But this work is not addressed to such a 
tribunal. It is written for various classes of readers, some 
of whom have already a special acquaintance with the sub- 
ject, some of whom have less, and some of whom have 
now none at all. It is designed to explain what the theory 



i 



xviii PREFACE. 

of eyolution is, and to encounter it in the mode best 
adapted to reach, the various minds of which the mass of 
readers is composed. If I had written only for scientists 
and philosophers, I should not have repeated anything. 

For similar reasons I have added to this volume both a 
general index and a glossary of the scientific and technical 
terms which I have had occasion to use. 

The whole of the text of this work had been written 
and electrotyped before I had an opportunity to see the 
very interesting ^^ Life and Correspondence " of the illus- 
trious naturalist, the late Louis Agassiz, edited by his 
accomplished widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Gary Agassiz, and 
published in October, 1885, by Houghton, Mifflin and 
Company, Boston. For a long period of years, after his 
residence in this country began, and until my removal 
from Boston to New York in 1862, I enjoyed as much of 
his intimacy as would be likely to subsist between persons 
of such different pursuits. I believe that I understood his 
general views of creation, from his lectures and conversa- 
tion. It is now made entirely certain that he never ac- 
cepted the doctrine of evolution of distinct types out of 
preceding and diiferent types by ordinary generation ; and 
it has been to me an inexpressible satisfaction to find that 
the opinions and reasoning contained in my work, and 
adopted independently of any influence of his, are con- 
firmed by what has now been given to the world. I need 
only refer to his letter to Prof. Sedgwick, written in June, 
1845, and to his latest utterance, the paper on " Evolution 
and Permanence of Type," in the thirty-third volume of 
the *' Atlantic Monthly," published after his lamented 



PREFACE. xix 

death in 1873, for proof that his opinions on the Darwin- 
ian theory never changed. Of all the scientists whom I 
have ever known, or whose writings I have read, Agassiz 
always seemed to me the broadest as well as the most exact 
and logical reasoner. 

New York, September ^ 1886. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Nature and importance of the subject — Is there a relation of Creator 
and creature between God and man ? — Rules of rational belief — 
Is natural theology a progressive science ? 1 

CHAPTER n. 
The Platonic Kosmos compared with the Darwinian theory of evolution 44 

CHAPTER III. 

The Darwinian pedigree of man — The evolution of organisms out of 

other organisms, according to the theory of Darwin . . .87 

CHAPTER IV. 
The doctrine of evolution according to Herbert Spencer . . .131 

CHAPTER V. 

The doctrine of evolution according to Herbert Spencer further con- 
sidered 167 

CHAPTER YI. 

The doctrine of evolution according to Herbert Spencer further con- 
sidered 200 

CHAPTER VII. 

Mr. Spencer's agnosticism — His theory of the origin of religious beliefs 
— The mode in which mankind are to lose the consciousness of a 
personal God 257 



I 



xxii CONTENTS, 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGE 

The existence, attributes, and methods of God deducible from the phe- 
nomena of Nature — Origin of the solar system .... 300 

CHAPTER IX. 

Does evolution account for the phenomena of society and of nature ? — 
Necessity for a conception of a personal actor — Mr. Spencer's 
protoplasmic origin of all organic life — The Mosaic account of 
creation treated as a hypothesis which may be scientifically con- 
trasted with evolution 334 

CHAPTER X. 

" Species," " races," and " varieties " — Sexual division — Causation . 372 

CHAPTER XL 

Origin of the human mind — Mr. Spencer's theory of the composition 

of mind — His system of morality 394 

CHAPTER XII. 

Mr. Spencer's philosophy as a whole — His psychology, and his system 
of ethics — The sacred origin of moral injunctions, and the secular- 
ization of morals 434 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Sophereus discourses on the nature and origin of the human mind . 46Y 

Glossary ^547 

Index 557 



CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 



CHAPTER I. 



Nature and importance of the subject — Is there a relation of Creator and 
creature between God and man ? — Rules of rational belief — Is natural 
theology a progressive science ? 

Mak finds himself in the uniyerse a conscious and 
thinking being. He has to account to himself for his own 
existence. He is impelled to this by an irresistible pro- 
pensity, which is constantly leading him to look both in- 
ward and outward for an answer to the questions : What 
am I ? How came I to be ? What is the limit of my ex- 
istence ? Is there any other being in the uniyerse between 
whom and myself there exists the relation of Creator and 
creature ? 

The whole history of the human mind, so far as we have 
any reliable history, is marked by this perpetual effort to 
find a First Cause. 

Howeyer wild and fantastic may be the idea which the 
savage conceives of a being stronger and wiser than him- 
self ; however groveling and sensual may be his conception 
of the form, or attributes, or action of that being, he is, 
when he strives after the comprehension of his deity, en- 
gaged in the same intellectual effort that is made by the 
most civilized and cultivated of mankind, when, speculat- 
ing upon the origin of the human soul, or its relation to 
the universe, or the genesis of the material world, they 
reach the sublime conception of an infinite God, the creator 



2 OEEATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

of all other spiritual existences and of all the forms of ani- 
mal life, or when they end in the theory that there is no 
God, or in that other theory which supposes that what we 
call the creation, man included, is an eyolution out of pri- 
mordial matter, which has been operated upon by certain 
fixed laws, without any special interposition of a creating 
power, exerted in the production of the forms of animal 
life that now inhabit this earth, or ever have inhabited it. 
In the investigation of these contrasted theories, it is neces- 
sary to remember that the faculties of the human mind are 
essentially the same in all conditions of civilization or bar- 
barism ; that they differ only in the degree of their growth, 
activity, and power of reasoning, and therefore that there 
must be a common standard to which to refer all beliefs. 
The sole standard to which we can refer a belief in anything 
is its rationality, or a comparison between that which is be- 
lieved and that which is most probable, according to the 
power of human reason to weigh probabilities. In the un- 
tutored and uncultivated savage, this power, although it 
exists, is still very feeble ; partly because it is exercised 
upon only a few objects, and partly because the individual 
has comparatively but little opportunity to know all the 
elements which should be taken into account in determin- 
ing a question of moral probabilities. 

In the educated and cultivated man this power of judg- 
ing probabilities, of testing beliefs by their rationality, is 
carried, or is capable of being carried, to the highest point 
of development, so as to comprehend in the calculation the 
full elements of the question, or at least to reduce the 
danger of some fatal omission to the minimum. It is, of 
course, true that the limited range of our faculties may pre- 
vent a full view of all the elements of any question of proba- 
bility, even when our faculties have attained the highest 
point of development experienced by the age in which we 
happen to live. This renders the rationality of any hy- 



FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF. 3 

pothesis less than an absolutely certain test of truth. But 
this rationality is all that we have to apply to any question 
of belief ; and if we attend carefully to the fact that moral 
probabilities constitute the groundwork of all our beliefs, 
and note the mental processes by which we reach conclusions 
upon any question depending upon evidence, we shall find 
reason to regard this power of testing beliefs by a conform- 
ity between the hypotheses and that which is most probable 
to be the most glorious attribute of the human understand- 
ing, as it is unquestionably the safest guide to which we 
can trust ourselves. 

It may be that, while philosophers will not object to 
my definition of rationality, churchmen will ask what place 
I propose to assign to authority in the formation of beliefs. 
I answer, in the first place, that I am seeking to make my- 
self understood by plain but reflecting and reasoning people. 
Such persons will perceive that what I mean by the ration- 
ality of a belief in any hypothesis is its fitness to be accepted 
and acted upon because it has in its favor the strongest 
probabilities of the case, so far as we can grasp those proba- 
bilities. I know of no other foundation for a belief in any- 
thing ; for belief is the acceptance by the mind of some 
proposition, statement, or supposed fact, the truth of which 
depends upon evidence addressed to our senses, or to our 
intellectual perceptions, or to both. In the next place, in 
regard to the influence of authority over our beliefs, it is 
to be observed that the existence of the authority is a ques- 
tion to be determined by evidence, and this question, there- 
fore, of itself involves an application of the test of ration- 
ality, or conformity with what is probable. But, assuming 
that the authority is satisfactorily established, it is not safe 
to leave all minds to the teaching of that authority, without 
the aid of the reasoning, which, independent of all author- 
ity, would conduct to the same conclusion. There are 
many minds to whom it is useless to say. You are com- 



4: CREATION OR EVOLUTION"? 

manded to believe. The question instantly arises, Com- 
manded by whom, or what ? And if the answer is, By the 
Church, or by the Bible, and the matter is left to rest upon 
that statement, there is great danger of unbelief. It is 
apparent that a large amount of what is called infidelity, or 
unbelief, now prevailing in the world, is due to the fact 
that men are told that they are commanded to believe, as if 
they were to be passive recipients of what is asserted, and 
because so little is addressed to their understandings. 

I do not wish to be understood as maintaining that 
there is no place for authority in matters of what is called 
religious belief. I am quite sensible that there may be 
such a thing as authority even in regard to our beliefs ; that 
it is quite within the range of possibilities that there should 
be such a relation between the human soul and an infinite 
Creator as to require the creature to accept by faith what- 
ever a proved revelation requires that intelligent creature 
to believe. But, in view of the fact that what is specially 
called revealed religion is addressed to an intelligent creat- 
ure, to whom the revelation itself must be proved by some 
evidence that will satisfy the mind, there is an evident ne- 
cessity for treating the rationality of a belief in God as an 
independent question. In some way, by some process, we 
must reach a belief in the existence of a being before we 
can consider the claims of a message which that being is 
supposed to have sent to us. What we have to work with, 
before we can approach the teaching of what is called re- 
vealed religion, is the mind of man and the material uni- 
verse. Do these furnish us with the rational basis for a be- 
lief in God ?J 

And here I shall be expected to say what I mean by a 
belief in God. I have neither so little reverence for what 
I myself believe in, nor so little respect for my readers, 
as to offer them anything but the common conception of 
God. All that is necessary for me to do, in order to put 



BELIEF IN GOD. 5 

5ay own mind in contact with that of the reader, is to ex- 
press my conception of God just as it would be expressed 
by any one who is accustomed to think of the being called 
God by the Christian, the Jew, the Mohammedan, or by 
some other branches of the human race. These different 
divisions of mankind may differ in regard to some of the 
attributes of the Deity, or his dealings with men, or the 
history or course of his goyernment of the world. But 
what is common to them all is a belief in God as the Su- 
preme Being, who is self-existing and eternal, by whose will 
all things and all other beiiigs were created, who is infinite 
in power and wisdom and in goodness and beneyolence. 
As an intellectual conception, this idea of a Supreme Be- 
ing, one only God, who never had a beginning and can 
have no end, and who is the creator of all other beings, ex- 
cludes, of course, the polytheism of the ancient civilized 
nations, or that of the present barbarous tribes ; and it es- 
pecially excludes the idea of what the Greeks called Des- 
tiny, which was a power that governed the gods as well as 
the human race, and was anterior and superior to Jove 
himself. The simple conception of the one God held by 
the Christian, the Jew, or the Mohammedan, as the First 
Cause of the universe and all that it embraces, creating all 
things and all other beings by his will, in contrast with 
the modern idea that they came into existence without the 
volition of a conscious and intelligent being making special 
creations, is what I present to the mind of the reader. 

This idea of God as a matter of belief presents, I re- 
peat, a question of moral probabilities. The existence of 
the universe has to be accounted for somehow. We can 
not shut out this inquiry from our thoughts. The human 
being who never speculates, never thinks, upon the origin 
of his own soul, or upon the genesis of this wondrous 
frame of things external to himself, or upon his relations 
to some superior being, is a very rare animal. If he is 



6 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

mucli more than an animal, he will haye some idea of these 
things ; and the theories by which some of the most culti- 
vated and acute intellects of our race, from the widest 
range of accumulated physical facts and phenomena yet 
gathered, have undertaken to account for the existence of 
species without referring them to the^ volition of an infinite 
creator, are at once a proof of the universal pressure of the 
question of creation upon the human mind, and of the logi- 
cal necessity for treating it as a question dependent upon 
evidence and probability. 

^1 lay out of consideration, now, the longing of the hu- 
man mind to find a personal God and Creator. This senti- 
ment, this yearning for an infinite father, this feeling of 
loneliness in the universe without the idea of God, is cer- 
tainly an important moral factor in the question of proba- 
bility ;|but I omit it now from the number of proofs, be- 
cause it is a sentiment, and because I wish to subject the 
belief in God as the Creator to the cold intellectual process 
by which we may discover a conformity between that hy- 
pothesis and the phenomena of Nature as a test of the 
probable truth. If such a conformity can be satisfactorily 
shown, and if the result of the process as conducted can 
fairly claim to be that the existence of God the Creator has 
by far the highest degree of probability above and beyond 
all other hypotheses that have been resorted to to account 
for our existence, the satisfaction of a moral feeling of the 
human heart may well become a source of happiness, a con- 
solation in all the evils of this life, and a support in the 
hour of death. 

But in this preliminary chapter I ought to state what I 
understand to be the scientific hypothesis or hypotheses 
with which I propose to contrast the idea of God as the 
creator of species by applying the test of probability. To 
discuss the superior claims of one h3rpothesis over another, 
without showing that there is a real conflict between them, 



THEOKY OF EVOLUTION. 7 

would be to set up a man of straw for the sake of knock- 
ing it down as if it were a living and real antagonist. What 
I desire to do is not to aim at a cheap victory by attacking 
something that does not call for opposition ; but it is to 
ascertain first whether there is now current any explanation 
or hypothesis concerning the origin of the creation, or any- 
thing that it contains, which rejects the idea of God as the 
creator of that which we know to exist and as it exists, and 
then to ascertain which of the two hypotheses ought to be 
accepted as the truth, because it has in its favor the highest 
attainable amount of probability. There is an amount of 
probability which becomes to us a moral demonstration, be- 
cause our minds are so constituted that conviction depends 
upon the completeness with which the evidence in favor of 
one hypothesis excludes the other from the category of ra- 
tional beliefs. 

I pass by the common sort of infidelity which rejects 
the idea of an intelligent creator acting in any manner 
whatever, whether by special creations or by laws of devel- 
opment operating on some primordial form of animal life. 
But among the modern scientists who have propounded 
explanations of the origin of species, I distinguish those 
who do not, as I understand, deny that there was an intel- 
ligent Creator by whose will some form of animal life was 
originally called into being, but who maintain that the 
diversified forms of animal life which we now see were not 
brought into being by the special will of the Creator as we 
now know them, but -that they were evolved, by a process 
called natural selection, out of some lower type of animated 
organism. / Of this class, the late Mr. Darwin is a repre- 
sentative. There is, however, at least one philosopher who 
carries the doctrine of evolution much farther, and who, if 
I rightly understand him, rejects any act of creation, even 
of the lowest and simplest type of animal existence. This 
is Mr. Herbert Spencer — a writer who, while he concurs in 



8 OEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

Mr. Darwin's general theory of natural selection as the pro- 
cess by which distinct organisms have been evolved out of 
other organisms, does not admit of any primal organism 
as the origin of the whole series of animals and as the crea- 
tion of an intelligent will. 

It will be appropriate hereafter to refer to the doctrine 
of evolution as a means of accounting for the existence of 
the human mind. At present it is only necessary to say 
that I understand it to be maintained as the hypothesis 
which has the highest attainable amount of evidence in its 
favor, that distinct species of animals are not a creation but 
a growth ; and also that the mind of man is not a special 
creation of a spiritual existence, but a result of a long pro- 
cess by which organized matter has slowly worked itself 
from matter into intellect. Wherever, for instance, these 
scientists may place the non-human primate, out of which 
man has been evolved by what is called natural selection, 
and whether they do or do not assume that he was a crea- 
tion of an intelligent will, they do not, as I understand, 
claim that the primate was endowed with what we call in- 
tellect ; so that at some time there was a low form of 
animal life without intellect, but intellect became evolved 
in the long course of countless ages, by the process of natu- 
ral selection, through the improving conditions and better 
organization of that low animal which had no intellect. In 
other words, we have what the scientist calls the non-human 
primate, a low form of animal without intellect, but capable 
of so improving its own physical organization as to create 
for itself and within itself that essence which we recognize 
as the human mind. Here, then, there is certainly a the- 
ory, an hypothesis, which may be and must be contrasted 
with the idea that the mind of man is a spiritual essence 
created by the volition of some other being having the 
power to create such existences, and put into a temporary 
union with a physical organization, by the establishment 



HUMAN DIGNITY UNIMPOKTANT. 9 

of a mysterious connection which makes the body the 
instrument of the soul so long as the connection exists. 
If I have stated correctly the theory which assigns the ori- 
gin of the human mind to the process of evolution, I have 
assuredly not set up a man of straw. I stand confronted 
with an hypothesis which directly encounters the idea that 
the human intellect is a creation, in the sense of a direct, 
intelligent, conscious, and purposed production of a special 
character, as the human mind and hand, in the production 
of whatever is permitted to finite capacities, purposely cre- 
ates some new and independent object of its wishes, its de- 
sires, or its wants. The human mind, says the scientist, i 
was not created by a spiritual being as a spiritual existence 
independent of matter, but it grew out of matter, that was 
at first so organized that it did not manifest what we call 
intellect, but that could so improve its own organization as 
to evolve out of matter what we know as mind. 

And here I lay out of view entirely the comparative dig- 
nity of man as a being whose existence is to be accounted 
for by the one hypothesis or the other, because this com- 
parative dignity is not properly an element in the question 
of probability. The doctrine of evolution, as expounded by 
Darwin and other modern scientists, may be true, and we 
shall still have reason to exclaim with Hamlet, '^ What a 
piece of work is man ! " 

^ On the other hand, the hypothesis that man is a special 
creation of an infinite workman, if true, does not enhance 
the mere a priori dignity of the human race. It may, and 
it will hereafter appear that it does, establish the moral ac- 
countability of man to a supreme being, a relation which, 
if I correctly understand the doctrine of evolution, is left 
out of the system that supposes intellect to be evolved out 
of the improving process by which matter becomes nerv- 
ous organization, whose action exhibits those manifesta- 
tions which we call mind. The moral accountability of 



10 . CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

man to a supreme being may, if it becomes established 
by proper evidence, be a circumstance that distinguishes 
him from other animals, and may, therefore, raise him in 
the scale of being. But then this dignity is a fact that 
comes after the process of reasoning has shown the rela- 
tion of creator and creature, and it should not be placed at 
the beginning of the process among the proofs that are to 
show that relation. Mr. Darwin, in concluding his great 
work, *' The Descent of Man," which he maintains to have 
been from some very low type of animated creature, through 
the apes, who became our ancestors, and who were devel- 
oped into the lowest savages, and finally into the civilized 
man, has anticipated that his theory will, he regrets to say, 
be " highly distasteful to many " ; and he adds, by way of 
parrying this disgust, that "he who has seen a savage in 
his native land will not feel much shame if forced to ac- 
knowledge that the blood of some more humble creature 
flows in his veins." For his own part, he adds, he would 
as soon be descended from a certain heroic little monkey 
who exposed himself to great danger in order to save the 
life of his keeper, as from a savage who delights to torture 
his enemies, offers bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide, 
etc. Waiving for the present the question whether the 
man who is called civilized is necessarily descended from 
or through the kind of savage whom Mr. Darwin saw in the 
Tierra del Fuego, or whether that kind of savage is a de- 
teriorated offshoot from some higher human creatures that 
possessed moral and intellectual characteristics of a more 
elevated nature, I freely concede that this question of the 
dignity of our descent is not of much logical consequence. 
However distasteful to us may be the idea that we are de- 
scended from the same stock as the apes, and that their direct 
ancestors are to be traced to some more humble creature un- 
til we reach the lowest form of organized and animated mat- 
ter, the dignity of our human nature is not to be reckoned 



CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION. H 

among the probabilities by which our existence is to be ac- 
counted for. It is, in this respect, like the feeling or senti- 
ment which prompts us to wish to find an infinite creator, 
the father of our spirits and the creator of our bodies. As 
a matter of reasoning, we must prove to ourselves, by evi- 
dence that satisfies the mind, that God exists. Having 
reached this conviction, the belief in his existence becomes 
a vast and inestimable treasure. But our wish to believe in 
God does not help us to attain that belief. In the same 
way our feeling about the dignity of man, the nobleness or 
ignobleness of our descent from or through one kind of 
creature or another, may be a satisfaction or a dissatisfac- 
tion after we have reached a conclusion, but it affords us no 
aid in arriving at a satisfactory conclusion from properly 
chosen premises. 

And here, in advance of the tests which I shall endeavor 
to apply to the existence of God and the existence of man 
as a special creation, I desire to say something respecting 
the question of a logical antagonism between science and 
religion. I have often been a good deal puzzled to make 
out what those well-meaning persons suppose, who unwarily 
admit that there is no necessary antagonism between what 
modem science teaches and what religion teaches. Whether 
there is or is not, depends upon what we mean by science 
and religion. If by science we understand the investigation 
of Nature, or a study of the structure and conditions of 
everything that we can subject to the observation of our 
senses, and the deduction of certain hypotheses from what 
we observe, then we must compare the hypotheses with the 
teachings or conclusions which we derive from religion. 
The next question, therefore, is, What is religion ? If we 
make it to consist in the Mosaic account of the creation, 
or in the teachings of the Bible respecting God, we shall 
find that we have to deal with more or less of conflict be- 
tween the interpretations that are put upon a record sup- 



12 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

posed to have been inspired, and the conclusions of science. 
But if we lay aside what is commonly understood by re- 
vealed religion, which supposes a special communication 
from a superior to an inferior being of something which 
the former desires the latter to know, after the latter has 
been for some time in existence, then we mean by religion 
that belief in the existence of a superior being which we 
derive from the exercise of our reasoning powers upon 
whatever comes within the observation of our senses, 
and upon our own intellectual faculties. In other words, 
for what we call natural religion, we look both out- 
ward and inward, in search of a belief in a Supreme 
Being. We look outward, because the whole universe 
is a vast array of facts, from which conclusions are to 
be drawn ; and among this array of facts is the construc- 
tion of our bodies. We look inward, because our own 
minds present another array of facts from which conclu- 
sions are to be drawn. 'Now, if the conclusions which the 
scientist draws from the widest observation of Nature, in- 
cluding the human mind itself, fail to account for the exist- 
ence of the mind of man, and natural religion does account 
for it, there is an irreconcilable conflict between science 
and religion. I can not avoid the conviction that Mr. Dar- 
win has missed the point of this conflict. " I am aware," 
he says, ''that the conclusions arrived at in this work will 
be denounced by some as highly irreligious ; but he who 
denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious 
to explain the origin of man, as a distinct species by descent 
from a lower form, through the laws of variation and nat- 
ural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual 
through the laws of ordinary reproduction." I do not un- 
derstand him, by the terms "religious" or "irreligious," 
to refer to anything that involves praise or blame for adopt- 
ing one hypothesis rather than another. I suppose he 
meant to say that a belief in his theory of the descent of 



DAEWINISM. 13 

man as a species is no more inconsistent with a belief in 
God than it is to beheye that the individual is brought 
into being through the operation of the laws of ordinary 
reproduction which God has established. This would be 
strictly true, if the hypothesis of man's descent as a dis- 
tinct species from some lower form accounted for his exist- 
ence by proofs that satisfy the rules of evidence by which 
our beliefs ought to be and must be determined. In that 
case, there would be no inconsistency between his hy- 
pothesis and that to which natural religion conducts us. 
On the other hand, if the Darwinian hypothesis fails to 
establish a relation between the soul of man, as a special 
creation, and a competent creator, then the antagonism be- 
tween this hypothesis and natural religion is direct, imme- 
diate, and irreconcilable ; for the essence of religion consists 
in that relation, and a belief in that relation is what we 
mean, or ought to mean, by religion. 

There is another form in which Mr. Darwin has depre- 
ciated the idea of any antagonism between his theory and 
our religious ideas, but it has the same logical defect as the 
suggestion which I have just considered, because it involves 
the same assumption. It is put hypothetically, but it is still 
an assumption, lacking the very elements of supreme prob- 
ability that can alone give it force. **Man," he observes, 
'^ may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, 
not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the 
organic scale ; and the fact of his having so risen, instead 
of being aboriginally placed there, may give him some hope 
for a still higher destiny in the distant future." I certain- 
ly would not misrepresent, and I earnestly desire to under- 
stand, this distinguished writer. It is a little uncertain 
whether he here refers to the hope of immortality, or of an 
existence after the connection between our minds and our 
bodies is dissolved, or whether he refers to the further ele- 
vation of man on this earth in the distant future of terres- 



14 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

trial time. If he referred to the hope of an existence after 
what we call death, then he ought to have shown that his 
theory is compatible with such a continued existence of the 
soul of man. ■ It will be one of the points on which I pro- 
pose to bestow some attention, that the doctrine of evolu- 
tion is entirely incompatible with the existence of the 
human soul for one instant after the brain has ceased to act 
as an organism, and death has wholly supervened ; because 
that doctrine, if I understand it rightly, regards the intel- 
lect of man as a high development of what in other animals 
is called instinct, and instinct as a confirmed and inherited 
habit of animal organism to act in a certain way. / If this 
is a true philosophical account of the origin and nature of 
intellect, it can have no possible individual existence after 
the organ called the brain, which has been in the habit of 
acting in a certain way, has perished, any more than there 
can be a digestion of food after the stomach or other as- 
similating organ has been destroyed. If, on the contrary, 
the mind of man is a special creation, of a spiritual essence, 
placed in an intimate union with the body for a temporary 
period, and made to depend for a time on the organs of 
that body as its means of manifestation and the exercise of 
its spiritual faculties, then it is conceivable that this uuion 
may be severed and the mind may survive, j Not only is 
this conceivable, but, as I shall endeavor hereafter to show, 
the proof of it rises very high in the scale of probability — 
so high that we may accept it as a fact, just as confidently 
as we accept many things of which we can not have abso- 
lute certainty. 

And here I think it needful, although not for all read- 
ers, but for the great majority, to lay down as distinctly as 
I can the rules of evidence which necessarily govern our 
beliefs. I do so because, in reading the works of many of 
the modern scientists who have espoused the Darwinian 
doctrine of evolution, I find that the rules of evidence are 



KULES OF EVIDENCE. 15 

but little observed. There is a yery great, often an aston- 
ishingly great, accumulation of facts, or of assumed facts. 
It is impossible not to be impressed by the learning, the in- 
dustry, and the range of these writers. Nor would I in the 
least impugn their candor, or question their accuracy as 
witnesses of facts, which I am not competent to dispute if 
I were disposed to do so. But there is one thing for which 
I may suppose myself competent. I haye through a long 
life been accustomed to form conclusions upon facts ; and 
this is what every person does and must do who is asked to 
accept a new theory or hypothesis of any kind upon any 
subject. 

Most of our beliefs depend upon what is called circum- 
stantial evidence. There are very few propositions which 
address themselves to our belief upon, one direct and iso- 
lated proof. We may class most of the perceptions of our 
senses among the simple and unrelated proofs which we 
accept without hesitation, although there is more or less of 
an unconscious and instantaneous process of reasoning, 
through which we pass before the evidence of our senses is 
accepted and acted upon. Then there are truths to which 
we yield an instant assent, because they prove themselves, 
as is the case with the mathematical or geometrical prob- 
lems, as soon as we perceive the connection in the steps of 
the demonstration. Besides these, there are many proposi- 
tions which, although they involve moral reasoning, have 
become axioms about which we do' not care to inquire, but 
which we assume to have been so repeatedly and firmly 
established that it would be a waste of time to go over the 
ground again whenever they come up. But there is a 
very large class of propositions which address themselves 
to our belief, which do not depend on a single perception 
through our senses, and are not isolated facts, and are not 
demonstrable by mathematical truth, and are not axioms 
accepted because they were proved long ago, and have by 



16 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

general consent been adopted into the common stock of 
ideas. The class of beliefs with which the rules of circum- 
stantial evidence are concerned are those where the truth 
of the proposition, or hypothesis, is a deduction from 
many distinct facts, but the coexistence of which facts 
leads to the inevitable conclusion that the proposition or 
hypothesis is true. We can not tell why it is that moral 
conviction is forced upon us by the coexistence of certain 
facts and their tendency to establish a certain conclusion. 
All we know is, that our minds are so constituted that we 
can not resist the force of circumstantial evidence if we 
suffer our faculties to act as reason has taught them. But, 
then, in any given case, whether we ought to yield our 
belief in anything where we have only circumstantial evi- 
dence to guide us, there are certain rules to be observed. 
The first of these rules is, that every fact in a collection of 
proofs from which we are to draw a certain inference must 
be proved independently by direct evidence, and must not 
be itself a deduction from some other fact. This is the 
first step in the process of arranging a chain of moral en- 
dence. There is a maxim in this branch of the law of 
evidence that you can not draw an inference from an in- 
ference. In other words, you can not infer a fact from 
some other fact, and then unite the former with two or 
more independent facts to make a chain of proofs. Every 
link in the chain must have its separate existence, and its 
existence must be established by the same kind and degree 
of evidence as if it were the only thing to be proved. The 
next rule is to place the several facts, when so proved, in 
their proper relation to each other in the group from which 
the inference is to be drawn. In circumstantial evidence a 
fact may be established by the most direct and satisfactory 
proofs, and yet it may have no relation to other facts with 
which you attempt to associate it. For example, suppose 
it to be proved that A on a certain occasion bought a cer- 



RULES OF EVIDENCE. 17 

tain poison, and that soon after B died of that kind of 
poison ; but it does not appear that A and B were ever 
seen together, or stood in any relation to each other. The 
fact that A bought poison would have no proper relation 
to the other fact that B died of that kind of poison. But 
introduce by independent evidence the third fact, that A 
knew B intimately, and then add the fourth fact, that A 
had a special motive for wishing B's death, you have some 
ground for believing that A poisoned B, although no human 
eye ever saw the poison administered. From this correla- 
tion of all the facts in a body of circumstantial evidence, 
there follows a third rule, namely, that the whole collec- 
tion of facts, in order to justify the inference sought to be 
drawn from them, must be consistent with that inference. 
Thus, the four facts above supposed are entirely consistent 
with the hypothesis that A poisoned B. But leave out the 
two intermediate facts, or leave out the last one, and B 
might as well have been poisoned by as by A. Hence 
there is a fourth rule : that the collection of facts from 
which an inference is to be drawn must not only be con- 
sistent with the probable truth of that inference, but they 
must exclude the probable truth of any other inference. 
Thus, not only must it be shown that A bought poison, 
that B died of poison, that A was intimate with B and had 
a motive for wishing B's death, but, to justify a belief in 
A's guilt, the motive ought to be shown to have been so 
strong as to exclude the moral probability that B was poi- 
soned by some one else, or poisoned himself. It is in the 
application of these rules that in courts of justice the minds 
of jurymen often become perplexed with doubts which they 
can not account for, or else they yield a too easy credence 
to the guilt of the accused when the question of guilt de- 
pends upon circumstantial evidence. 

I shall not spend much time in contending that these 
rules of evidence must be applied to scientific investigations 



18 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

whicli are to affect our belief in such a proposition as the 
descent of man from a common ancestor with the monkey. 
This is not only an hypothesis depending upon circumstan- 
tial evidence, but it is professedly a deduction from a great 
range of facts and from a very complex state of facts. In 
reasoning upon such subjects, when the facts which consti- 
tute the chain of circumstantial evidence are very numer- 
ous, we are apt to regard their greater comparative number 
as if it dispensed with a rigid application of the rules of de- 
termination. Every one can see, in the illustration above 
employed, borrowed from criminal jurisprudence, that the 
facts which constitute the chain of circumstantial evidence 
ought to be rigidly tested by the rules of determination be- 
fore the guilt of the accused can be safely drawn as a deduc- 
tion from the facts. But, in reasoning from physical facts 
to any given physical hypothesis where the facts are very 
numerous, there is a strong tendency to relax the rules of 
evidence, because, the greater the accumulation of supposed 
facts becomes, the greater is the danger of placing in the 
chain of evidence something that is not proved, and thus of 
vitiating the whole process. To this tendency, which I have 
observed to be very frequent among scientists, I should ap- 
ply, without meaning any disrespect, the term invention. 
A great accumulation of facts is made, following one another 
in a certain order ; all those which precede a certain inter- 
mediate link are perhaps duly and independently proved, 
and the same may be the case with those which follow that 
link. But there is no proof of the fact that constitutes the 
link and makes a complete chain of evidence. This vacuity 
of proof, if one may use such an expression, is constantly oc- 
curring in the writings of naturalists, and is often candidly 
admitted. It is gotten over by reasoning from the ante- 
cedent and the subsequent facts that the intermediate facts 
must have existed ; and then the reasoning' goes on to draw 
the inference of the principal hypothesis from a chain of 



MISSING LINKS. 19 

proof in which a necessary intermediate link is itself a mere 
inference from facts which may be just as consistent with 
the non-existence as with the existence of the supposed 
intermediate link. In such cases we are often told yery 
frankly that no one has yet discovered that the intermediate 
link ever actually existed ; that the researches of science 
have not yet reached demonstrative proof of the existence 
of a certain intermediate animal or vegetable organization ; 
that geological exploration has not yet revealed to us all the 
specimens of the animal or vegetable kingdoms that may 
have inhabited this globe at former periods of time; but 
that the analogies which lead down or lead up to that as 
yet undiscovered link in the chain are such that it must 
have existed, and that we may confidently expect that the 
actual proof of it will be found hereafter. The difficulty 
with this kind of reasoning is that it borrows from the main 
hypothesis which one seeks to establish the means of show- 
ing the facts from which the hypothesis is to be drawn as 
an inference. Thus, for example, the hypothesis is that 
the species called man is a highly developed animal formed 
by a process of natural selection that went on for unknown 
ages among the individuals descended from the progenitor 
of the anthropomorphous apes. The facts in the physical 
organization and mental manifestations of the animal called 
man, when viewed historically through all the conditions 
in which we know anything of this species, lead up to that 
common supposed ancestor of the apes. The facts in the 
physical organization and instinctive habits of the ape, 
when viewed historically through all the conditions in 
which, we know anything of his species, show that he, too, 
was evolved by the process of natural selection out of that 
same ancestor. Intermediate, respectively, between the 
man and the monkey and their primordial natural-selec- 
tion ancestor or predecessor, there are links in the chain 
of proof of which we have no evidence, and which must 



20 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

be supplied bj inferring their existence from the analo- 
gies which we can trace in comparing things of which 
we have some satisfactory proof. Thus, the main hy- 
pothesis, the theory of natural selection as the explana- 
tion of the existence of distinct species of animals, is not 
drawn from a complete chain of established facts, but it 
is helped out by inferring from facts that are proved 
other facts that are not proved, but which we have reason 
to expect will be discovered hereafter. I need not say 
that this kind of argument will not do in the common 
affairs of life, and that no good reason can be shown why 
our beliefs in matters of science should be made to depend 
upon it. 

We do not rest our belief in what is called the law of 
gravitation upon any chain of proof in which it is necessary 
to supply a link by assuming that it exists. The theory 
that bodies have a tendency to approach each other, that 
the larger mass attracts to itself the smaller by a mysterious 
force that operates through all space, is a deduction from 
a great multitude of perpetually recurring facts that are 
open to our observation, no one of which is inferred from 
any other fact, while the whole excludes the moral proba- 
bility that any other hypothesis will account for the phe- 
nomena which are continually and invariably taking place 
around us. 

This illustration of the rules of evidence, when ap- 
plied to scientific inquiries, leads me to refer to one of the 
favorite postulates of the evolution school. We are often 
told that it ought to be no objection to the doctrine of 
evolution that it is new, or startling, or contrary to other 
previous theories of the existence of species. We are re- 
minded again and again that Galileo's grand conception was 
scouted as an irreligious as well as an irrational hypothe- 
sis, and that the same reception attended the first pro- 
mulgation of many scientific truths which no intelligent 



TRUE OFFICE OF EXPERTS. 21 

and well-informed person now doubts.* Then we have it 
asserted that the doctrine of evolution is now accepted by 
nearly all the most advanced and accomplished natural 
philosophers, especially those of the rising scientists who 
have bestowed most attention upon it. Upon this there 
are two things to be said : First, it is a matter of very 
little consequence that the learned of a former age did not 
attend to the proofs of the law of gravitation, or of any 
other new theory of physics, as they should have done, and 
that they consequently rejected it. Their logical habits of 
mind, their preconceived religious notions, and many other 
disturbing causes, rendered them incapable of correct reason- 
ing on some particular subject, while they could reason with 
entire correctness on other subjects. Secondly, the extent 

* Galileo's "heresy," that the earth moves round the sun, was con- 
demned by a papal decree in the sixteenth century as " absurd, philosoph- 
ically false, and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy 
Scripture." No Roman Catholic now dreams of disputing what the Floren- 
tine astronomer maintained ; and the evolutionists are perpetually foretell- 
ing that the time will come when to question their doctrine will be admitted 
to be as ridiculous as was the papal interdict fulminated against Galileo. 
/it their doctrine had nothing to confront it but a similar condemnation, 
proceeding from some ecclesiastical authority claiming to be " infallible," 
or, if it could be met only by the assertion that it is " contrary to Holy 
Scripture," there would be some analogy between the two cases. But there 
is a vast unlikeness between the two cases. While the hypothesis of ani- 
mal evolution is plainly enough " contrary to Holy Scripture," no one who 
has any perception of the weakness of its proofs is obliged to rest his 
rejection of it on that ground. / If, in the sixteenth century, there had been 
as good scientific and physical grounds on which to refute Galileo as there 
now are for questioning the doctrine of the evolution of distinct species out 
of other species, the papal condemnation would have been superfluous even 
for churchmen. We must not forget the age in which we live, or allow 
any kind of truth to fail of vindication, from fear of being classed with those 
who in some former age have blunderingly mistaken the means of vindi- 
cating truth. Belief in special creations, whatever the Bible may say, does 
not now, and in all probability never will, stand on a par with the belief 
that the sun moves round the earth. 



» 



22 CEEATION OE EVOLUTION? 

to which a new theory is accepted by those whose special 
studies lead them to make the necessary investigations, 
does not dispense with the application of the laws of eyi- 
dence to the facts which are supposed to establish the 
theory. The doctrine of evolution addresses itself not 
only to the scientific naturalist, but to the whole intelligent 
part of mankind. How is one who does not belong to this"^ 
class of investigators to regulate his belief in the theory 
which they propound ? Is he to take it on their authority ? 
or is he, while he accords to their statements of facts all 
the assent which as witnesses they are entitled to expect 
from him, to apply to their deduction the same principles 
of belief that he applies to everything else which challenges 
belief, and to assent or dissent accordingly ? No one, I 
presume, will question that the latter is the only way in 
which any new matter of belief should be approached. I 
have not supposed that any scientist questions this ; but I 
have referred to the constant iteration that the doctrine of 
evolution is now generally admitted by men of science, 
that the assertion, supposing it to be true, may pass for just 
what it is worth. Ifc is worth this and no more : that 
candid, truthful, and competent witnesses, when they speak 
of facts that they have observed, are entitled to be believed 
as to the existence of those facts. When they assume facts 
which they do not prove, but which are essential links in 
the chain of evidence, or when the facts which they do 
prove do not rationally exclude every other hypothesis 
excepting their own, the authority of even the whole body 
of such persons is of no more account than that of any 
other class of intelligent and cultivated men. In the ages 
when ecclesiastical authority exercised great power over the 
beliefs of men upon questions of physical science, the su- 
periority was accorded to the authority which claimed it, 
and the scientist who propounded a new physical theory 
that did not suit the theologian was overborne. It seems 



VALUE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY. 23 

to me that it is a tendency of the present age to substitute 
the authority of scientific experts in the place of the eccle- 
siastical authority of former periods, by demanding that 
something more than the office of witnesses of facts shall 
be accorded to them. We are told that it is a very impor- 
tant proof of the soundness of deductions, that the deduc- 
tions are drawn by the greater number of the specialists 
who have examined the facts. Sometimes this is carried 
so far as to imply presumption in those who do not yield 
assent to the theory, as if it ought to be accepted upon the 
authority of the experts whose proper office it is to furnish 
us with the facts, and whose deductions we have to examine 
upon the strength of their reasoning. Those of us who are 
not professors of the particular science may be charged with 
ignorance or incapacity if we do not join in the current of 
scientific opinion. But, after all, the new theory challenges 
our belief. If we examine it at all, we must judge of it, 
not by the numbers of those who propound or accept it, 
or by any amount of mere authority, but by the soundness 
of the reasoning by which its professors support it. 

The reader is now informed of what he may expect to 
find discussed in this volume. It remains for me to indi- 
cate the mode in which the discussion will be carried on. 
I propose to divest my own mind, and so far as I may 
to divest the mind of the reader, of all influence from re- 
vealed religion. I shall not refer to the Mosaic account of 
the creation excepting as I refer to other hypotheses. "With 
its authority as an account given by the Deity himself 
through his chosen servant, I have here nothing to do. 
Nor shall I rely upon the revelation recorded in the New 
Testament. All the inquiries which I propose to make 
are those which lie in the domain of natural religion ; 
and while I can not expect, in exploring this domain, 
to make discoveries or to find arguments which can claim 
the merit of originality, I may avoid traveling in a well- 



24: CREATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

beaten path, by pursuing the line of my own reflections, 
without considering whether they coincide with or differ 
from the reasonings of others. Although, at a former 
period of my life, I have studied the great writers whose 
speculations in the science of natural theology are the most 
famous and important pieces in its literature, it is more 
than forty years since I have looked into one of them ; and 
I do not propose to turn to them now, in order to see 
whether they have or have not left any traces in my mind. 
It is quite possible that critics may array against me the 
authority of some great name or names ; but even if I am 
to be charged with presumption in entering upon this field, 
it will not be found, so far as I am conscious, that I have 
borrowed an argument, imitated a method, or followed an 
example. 

There is a passage in one of the writings of Lord Ma- 
caulay in which that brilliant essayist maintained that 
natural theology is not a progressive science. Macaulay's 
tendency to paradox was often aggravated by the super- 
ficial way in which he used his multifarious knowledge. 
As in the course of this work I am about to do that which 
he regarded as idle, namely, to inquire whether natural re- 
ligion, aside from revelation, is of any value as a means of 
reaching a belief in the existence and attributes of God and 
the immortality of man, I cite the passage in which Ma- 
caulay makes the assertion that natural theology has made 
no progress from the time of the Greek philosophers to the 
present day : "As respects natural religion, revelation be- 
ing for the present altogether left out of the question, it is 
not easy to see that a philosopher of the present day is 
more favorably situated than Thales or Simonides. He has 
before him just the same evidences of design in the struct- 
ure of the universe that the early Greeks had. "We say just 
the same, for the discoveries of modern astronomers and 
anatomists have really added nothing to the force of that 



MACAULAY ON NATURAL THEOLOGY. 25 

argument whicli a reflecting mind finds in every beast, bird, 
insect, fish, leaf, flower, and sbelL The reasoning by which 
Socrates in Xenophon's hearing confuted the little atheist 
Aristophanes, is exactly the reasoning of Paley's ' Natural 
Theology.' Socrates mates precisely the same use of the 
statues of Polycletus and the pictures of Zeuxis which Paley 
makes of the watch. As to the other great question, the 
question what becomes of man after death, we do not see 
that a highly educated European, left to his unassisted rea- 
son, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackf oot Indian. 
Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass 
the Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest light on the 
state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth, 
all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who haye at- 
tempted without the aid of revelation to prove the immor- 
tality of man, from Plato down to Franklin, appear to us 
to have failed deplorably. 

"Then, again, all the great enigmas which perplex the 
natural theologian are the same in all ages. The ingenuity 
of a people just emerging from barbarism is quite sufficient 
to propound those enigmas. The genius of Locke or Clarke 
is quite unable to solve them. It is a mistake to imagine 
that subtile speculations touching the Divine attributes, 
the origin of evil, the necessity of human actions, the foun- 
dation of moral obligation, imply any high degree of in- 
tellectual culture. Such speculations, on the contrary, are 
in a peculiar manner the delight of intelligent children and 
of half -civilized men. The number of boys is not small 
who, at fourteen, have thought enough on these questions 
to be fully entitled to the praise which Voltaire gives to 
Zadig : ' II en savait ce qu'on a su dans tons les ages ; c'est 
a dire, fort pen de chose.' 

"The book of Job shows that, long before letters and 
arts were known to Ionia, these vexing questions were 
debated with no common skill and eloquence under the 



k 



26 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

tents of the Idumean emirs ; nor has human reason, in 
the course of three thousand years, discovered any satis- 
factory solution of the riddles which perplexed Eliphaz 
and Zophar. Natural theology, then, is not a progressive 
science."* 

Here, in the space of two not very long paragraphs, is 
a multitude of allusions which evince the range of Lord 
Macaulay's reading, but which are employed, without very 
close thinking, in a quite inaccurate way, to sustain asser- 
tions that are not true. If he had said that a modern phi- 
losopher has before him in the structure of the universe not 
only all the same evidence of design which the early Greeks 
had, but a great deal more, he would have hit the exact 
truth. It is simple extravagance to say that modern astron- 
omy has added nothing to the strength of the argument 
which shows the existence of a supreme lawgiver and artifi- 
cer of infinite power and skill. What did the early Greeks 
know about the structure of the solar system, the law of 
universal gravitation, and the laws of motion ? Compare 
the ideas entertained by the Greek philosophers of the phe- 
nomena of the universe with those which modern astron- 
omy has enabled a modern philosopher to assume as sci- 
entific facts established by rigorous demonstration ; com- 
pare what was known before the invention of the telescope 
with what the telescope has revealed ; compare the prog- 
ress that was made in Greek speculative philosophy from the 
time of Thales to the time of Plato, and then say whether 
natural religion had not made advances of the greatest im- 
portance even before modern science had multiplied the 
means for still greater progress. A brief summary of the 
Greek philosophy concerning the producing causes of phe- 
nomena will determine whether Lord Macaulay was right 
or wrong in the assertion that the "early Greeks" had as 

* Macaulay's " Essays," etc., Riverside edition, vol. ii, 602-504. 



j THALES. 27 

good means of making true deductions in natural theology 
as the means which exist to-day. 

All scholars who have attended to the history of Greek 
speculation know that the Greeks held to the belief in poly- 
theistic personal agents as the active producers of the phe- 
nomena of Nature. This was the system of Homer and 
Hesiod and the other old poets. This was the popular be- 
lief held throughout all the Hellenic world, and it contin- 
ued to be the faith of the general public, not only after the 
different schools of philosophy had arisen, but down to and 
after the time when St. Paul stood on Mars Hill and told 
the men of Athens how he had found that they were in all 
things too superstitious. Thales, who flourished in the 
first half of the sixth century before Christ, was the first 
Greek who suggested a physical agency in place of a per- 
sonal. He assumed the material substance, water, to be 
the primordial matter and universal substratum of every- 
thing in Nature. ' All other substances were, by transmu- 
tations, generated from water, and when destroyed they all 
returned into water., His idea of the earth was that it was 
a flat, round surface floating on the immense watery ex- 
panse or ocean. In this he agreed with the old poets ; but 
he did not, like them, suppose that the earth extended 
down to the depths of Tartarus. The Thalesian hypothe- 
sis, therefore, rejected the Homeric Okeanus, the father of 
all things, and substituted for that personal agency the 
agency of one primordial physical substance, by its own 
energy producing all other substances. This is about all 
that is known of the philosophy of Thales, and even this is 
not known from any extant writing of his, but it is de- 
rived from what subsequent writers, including Aristotle, 
have imputed to him.* Why Lord Macaulay should have 
selected Thales as the Greek philosopher who was as favor- 

*Grote's"Plato,"i, 4. 



28 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

ably situated as a philosopher of the present day for dealing 
with questions of natural religion, is not very apparent. All 
that Thales did, assuming that we know what he did, was 
to strike out a new vein of thought, the direct opposite of 
the poetical and popular idea of the origin of phenomena. 

From Thales to Plato, a century and a half intervened.* 
During this period there arose, according to Mr. Grote, 
twelve distinct schemes of philosophy, the authors of which 
that learned Englishman has enumerated, together with an 
admirable summary of their respective systems. From this 
summary certain things are apparent. All these philoso- 
phers, from Thales to Democritus, while each speculated 
upon Nature in an original vein of his own, endeavored to 
find an explanation or hypothesis on which to account for 
the production and generation of the universe by some 
physical agency apart from the mythical personifications 
which were believed in by the populace and assumed in the 
poetical theologies. Some of them, without blending ethics 
and theology in their speculations, adopted, as the univer- 
sal and sufficient agents, the common, familiar, and pervad- 
ing material substances, such as water, fire, air, etc. ; others, 
as Pythagoras and his sect, united with ethical and theo- 
logical speculations the idea of geometrical and arithmeti- 
cal combinations as the primal scientific basis of the phe- 
nomena of iNiature. But what was common to all these 
speculations was the attempt to find a scientific basis on 
which to explain, by physical generation, by transmutation 
and motion from place to place, the generation of the Kos- 
mos, to take the place of generation by a divine personal 
agency or agencies. But while these speculations were of 
course unsuccessful, their abundance and variety, the in- 
ventive genius which they exhibit, the effort to find a scien- 
tific basis apart from the popular and poetic belief in a 

* Thales flourished 620-560 b. c. Plato's life extended from 427-347 u. c. 



PLATO AND ARISTOTLE. 29 

multitude of personal and diyine agencies, constitute, as 
Mr. Grote has well said, " one of the most memorable facts 
in the history of the Hellenic mind" ; and "the mental 
effort required to select some known agency and to connect 
it by a chain of reasoning with the result, all this is a new 
phenomenon in the history of the human mind." Such an 
amount of philosophical speculations could not go on for a 
century and a half without enlarging the means for deal- 
ing with questions of natural theology ; for they very nearly 
exhausted the "causings and beginnings" which could be 
assigned to regular knowable and predictable agencies ; and 
these they carried through almost every conceivable form of 
action by which such agencies could be supposed to operate. 
While the authors of these systems of philosophy were con- 
stantly hampered by the popular and poetic conceptions of 
a diversified and omnipresent polytheistic agency, a belief 
which, as Mr. Grote has said, was "eminently captivating 
and impressive," and which pervaded all the literature of 
their time, their speculations accumulated a vast fund of 
ideas in the sphere of scientific explanations, which, al- 
though unsatisfactory to modern science, became, when we 
reach Plato, the principal influence which led him to revert 
to the former idea of a divine agency, intentionally and de- 
liberately constructing out of a chaotic substratum the sys- 
tem of the Kosmos ; and which also led him to unite with 
it the idea of a mode in which it acted on and through the 
primordial elements of matter. 

So that, from the class of philosophers to whom Lord 
Macaulay presumably referred as " the early Greeks," down 
to and including Plato, there was a great advance. The 
earlier Greek philosophers did not divide substance from its 
powers or properties, nor did they conceive of substance as 
a thing acted upon by power, or of power as a thing distinct 
from substance. They regarded substance, some primordial 
substance, with its powers and properties, as an efficient and 



30 OKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

material cause, and as the sole cause, as a positive and final 
agent. They did not seek for a final cause apart from the 
substances which they supposed to be the sole agents oper- 
ating to produce important effects. But, inasmuch as they 
carried their various theories through nearly the whole range 
of possible speculation, they enabled Plato and Aristotle to 
see that there was a fundamental defect in their reasoning ; 
that there must be an abstract conception of power as some- 
thing distinct from substance or its properties. It was by 
Plato and Aristotle that this abstract conception was reached, 
of course without any influence of what we regard as reve- 
lation ; and, although they did not always describe correctly 
the mode in which this power had acted, their perception 
of the logical necessity for such a final cause marks a great 
progress in philosophical speculation. It entirely refutes 
Lord Macaulay's assertion that natural theology is not a 
progressive science. It had made great progress from 
Thales to Plato ; and while in a certain sense it is true 
that '^a modern philosopher has before him just the same 
evidence of design in the structure of the universe which 
the early Greeks had " — that is, he has the same physical 
phenomena to observe — it is not true that the early Greeks 
did not develop conceptions of the origin of the universe 
valuable to their successors. Lord Macaulay should not 
have compared Thales with the modern philosopher, in re- 
spect of advantage of situation, but he should have com- 
pared the modern philosopher with Plato, and Plato with 
his predecessors ; and if he had done this, he could not have 
asserted with any show of truth that natural theology has 
made no advance as a science from the time of Thales, 
the Milesian philosopher, and Simonides, the poet, to the 
present day. I shall have occasion hereafter to speak of 
the masterly intellectual power by which Plato wrought 
out his conception of a formative divine agency in the pro- 
duction of the Kosmos, and the bold and original specula- 



PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM. 31 

tion by which he ayoided the charge of infidelity toward 
the established religion of his countrymen. 

When I come to speak of what modern astronomy has 
done in furnishing us with new means of sound philo- 
sophical speculation on the being, attributes, and methods 
of God, it will be seen whether Lord Macaulay is correct 
in the assertion that it has added nothing to the argu- 
ment. At present I will briefly advert to what the ^' early 
Greeks," or any of the Greeks, knew of the structure of 
the solar system. We learn, from a work which dates from 
nearly the middle of the second century of the Christian 
era, what was the general conception of the solar system 
among the ancients, including the Greeks. This work is 
known as the "Almagest" of Ptolemy, and the name of 
the " Ptolemaic System " has been given to the theory 
which he describes. This theory was common to all the 
ancient astronomers, Ptolemy's statement of it being a 
compendium of what they believed. Its principal features 
are these : 1. The heavens are a vast sphere, in which the 
heavenly bodies are set, and around the pole of this sphere 
they revolve in a circle every day. 2. The earth is like- 
wise a sphere, and is situated in the center of the celestial 
plane as a fixed point. The earth having no motion, and 
being in the center of all the motions of the other bodies, 
the diurnal revolutions of those bodies are in a uniform 
motion around it. 3. The sun, being one of the heavenly 
bodies making a revolution around the earth, was supposed 
to be placed outside of the position of Venus in the heav- 
enly sphere. The order of the Ptolemaic system was thus : 
The moon was first, being nearest to the earth ; then came 
Mercury and Venus, the sun being between Venus and 
Mars. Beyond Mars came Jupiter and Saturn. Plato's 
arrangement was in one respect different, his order being 
the moon, the sun. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and 
Saturn. But this ideal heavenly sphere, with the earth in 



32 CREATIO^r OR EVOLUTION? 

the center of all the revolutions of the other bodies, and 
remaining quiescent — a theory which was common to all the 
ancient astronomers — was the result of observing the mo- 
tions of the heavenly bodies as they appear to a spectator 
on the earth. Such a spectator would have this appear- 
ance of a celestial sphere presented to him wherever he 
might be ; and, judging from the apparent motions of the 
heavenly bodies relative to his own position at the center, 
he would conclude that the earth is at that center, and that 
it remains at rest, supported on nothing. It required cer- 
tain discoveries to explode this system of a celestial sphere. 
First came Copernicus, who, about the middle of the six- 
teenth century of our era, published his demonstrations, 
which convinced the world of two great propositions : 1. 
That the diurnal revolution of the heavens is nothing but 
an apparent motion, caused by the revolution of the earth 
on its own axis. 2. That the earth is but one of a group 
of planets, all of which revolve around the sun as a center. 
'Next came Kepler, who, in the early part of the seven- 
teenth century, recognizing the truth of the Copernican 
system, determined the three laws of planetary motion : 1. 
That the orbit of each planet is an ellipse, the sun being in 
one focus. 2. That as each planet moves around the sun, 
the line which joins it to the sun passes over equal areas in 
equal times. 3. That the square of the time of a planet's 
revolution around the sun is in proportion to the cube of 
its mean distance from the sun. These laws were discov- 
ered by Kepler as deductions made upon mathematical 
principles from observations which had to be carried on 
without the aid of the telescope, and without that knowl- 
edge of the general laws of motion which came later. Kep- 
ler's laws, although in the main correct, were subsequently 
found to be subject to certain deviations in the planetary 
motions. It was when Galileo, the contemporary of Kep- 
ler, who, if he was not the first inventor of the telescope. 



PYTHAGORAS. 38 

was the first to use it in astronomical observations, was able 
by means of it to discover the general laws of motion, that 
the substantial accuracy of Kepler's three laws could be 
proved, while at the same time the deviations from them 
were accounted for. Still, there was wanting the grand 
discovery, which would disclose the cause of these motions 
of the planets in elliptical orbits, and the relations between 
their distances and their times of revolution, and thus re- 
duce the whole of the phenomena to a general law. Des- 
cartes, who flourished 1596-1650, first attempted to do 
this by his theory of Vortices. He supposed the sun to be 
immersed in a vast fluid, which, by the sun's rotation, was 
made to rotate in a whirlpool, that carried the planets 
around with it, the outer ones revolving more slowly be- 
cause the parts of the ethereal fluid in which they were im- 
mersed moved more slowly. This was a reversion back to 
some of the ancient speculations. It was reserved for 
Newton to discover the law of universal gravitation, by 
which, in the place of any physical connection between the 
bodies of the solar system by any intervening medium, the 
force of attraction exerted by a larger body upon a smaller 
would draw the smaller body out of the straight line that 
it would pursue when under a projectile force, and would 
thus convert its motion into a circular revolution around 
the attracting body, and make the orbit of this revolution 
elliptical by the degree in which the attracting force varied 
in intensity according to the varying distance between the 
two bodies. When Newton's laws of motion were discov- 
ered and found to be truej the phenomena of the solar 
system were explained. 

It may be interesting, before leaving for the present this 
branch of the subject, to advert more particularly to one of 
the philosophical systems of the Greeks, which, when com- 
pared with the discoveries of modern astronomy, illustrates 
the great addition that has been made to our means of sound 



34 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

speculation upon the origin of the material universe. I 
refer to the system of the Pythagoreans — one of the most 
remarkable instances of the invention of facts to fit and 
carry out a theory that can be found in the history of phi- 
losophy, although we are not without striking examples of 
this practice in modern speculations. It has already been 
seen that, during the whole period of Greek philosophy 
before the time of Plato, the problem was to find a primor- 
dial and universal agent by which the sensible universe was 
built up and produced ; supplying, that is to say, the mat- 
ter and force required for the generation of successive 
products.* It has been seen that the Thalesian philoso- 
phers undertook to solve this problem by the employ- 
ment of some primordial physical substance, such as water, 
fire, air, etc. Pythagoras and his school held that the es- 
sence of things consisted in number ; by which they did 
not mean simply that all things could be numbered, but 
they meant that numbers were substance, endowed with an 
active force, by which things were constituted as we know 
them. In the Pythagorean doctrine number was the self- 
existing reality ; not, as in Plato's system of ideas, separate 
from things, but as the essence or determining principles 
of things, and having, moreover, magnitude and active 
force, f This remarkably subtle conception of an agent in 
the production of material things evinces the effort that 
was making, in a direction opposite to that of Thales and 
his immediate successors, to find a First Cause. It was 
carried out by the Pythagoreans in the movements of the 
heavenly bodies, in the works ©f human art, and in musical 
harmony ; in all of which departments, according to Mr. 
Grote, they considered measure and number as the produc- 
ing and directing agencies. We are here concerned only 

* Grote's " Plato," i, 10. I follow Mr. Grote in describing the hypoth- 
esis of the Pythagoreans. f Ibid. 



THE PYTHAGOREANS. 35 

with their application of this theory to the celestial bodies. 
One of their writers is quoted by Mr. Grote as a representa- 
tive of the school which was founded by Pythagoras (about 
530 B. c), and which extended into the Graeco-Italian 
cities, where, as a brotherhood, they had political ascend- 
ency until they were put down and dispersed about 509 
B. c. ; but they continued for several generations as a social, 
religious, and philosophical sect. According to this writer 
(Philolaus), '^ the Dekad, the full and perfect number, was 
of supreme and universal efficacy as the guide and principle 
of life, both to the Kosmos and to man. The nature of 
number was imperative and law-giving, affording the only 
solution of all that was perplexing or unknown ; without 
number all would be indeterminate and unknowable." 

Accordingly, the Pythagoreans constructed their sys- 
tem of the universe by the all-pervading and producing 
energy of this primordial agent, Number, in the manner 
thus described by Mr. Grote (i, 12-15) : " The Pythagore- 
ans conceived the Kosmos, or the universe, as one single 
system, generated out of numbers. Of this system the cen- 
tral point — the determining or limiting One — was first in 
order of time and in order of philosophical conception. By 
the determining influence of this central constituted One, 
portions of the surrounding Infinite were successively at- 
tracted and brought into system : numbers, geometrical 
figures, solid substances were generated. But, as the Kos- 
mos thus constituted was composed of numbers, there could 
be no continuum ; each numeral unit was distinct and sep- 
arate from the rest by a portion of vacant space, which was 
imbibed, by a sort of inhalation, from the infinite space 
or spirit without. The central point was fire, called by the 
Pythagoreans the Hearth of the Universe (like the public 
hearth or perpetual fire maintained in the prytaneum of a 
Grecian city), or the watch-tower of Zeus. Around it re- 
volved, from west to east, ten divine bodies, with unequal 



36 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

velocities, but in symmetrical moyement or regular dance. 
Outermost was the circle of the fixed stars, called by the 
Pythagoreans Olympus, and composed of fire like the center. 
Within this came successiyely, with orbits more and more 
approximating to the center, the five planets, Saturn, Jupi- 
ter, Mars, Venus, Mercury ; next, the sun, the moon, and 
the earth. Lastly, between the earth and the central fire, 
an hypothetical body, called the Antichthon, or counter- 
earth, was imagined for the purpose of making up a total 
represented by the sacred number ten, the symbol of per- 
fection and totality. The Antichthon was analogous to a 
separated half of the earth, simultaneous with the earth in 
its reyolutions, and corresponding with it on the opposite 
side of the central fire. The inhabited portion of the earth 
was supposed to be that which was turned away from the 
central fire and toward the sun, from which it received 
light. But the sun itself was not self-luminous : it was 
conceived as a glassy disk, receiving and concentrating light 
from the central fire, and reflecting it upon the earth, so 
long as the two were on the same side of the central fire. 
The earth revolved in an orbit obliquely intersecting that 
of the sun, and in twenty-four hours, round the central fire, 
always turning the same side toward that fire. The alter- 
nation of day and night was occasioned by the earth being, 
during a part of such revolution, on the same side of the 
central fire with the sun, and thus receiving light reflected 
from him ; and during the remaining part of her revolution 
on the side opposite to him, so that she received no light at 
all from him. The earth, with the Antichthon, made this 
revolution in one day ; the moon, in one month ; the sun, 
with the planets Mercury and Venus, in one year ; the plan- 
ets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in longer periods respectively, 
according to their distances from the center ; lastly, the 
outermost circle of the fixed stars (the Olympus, or the 
Asslanes), in some unknown period of very long duration. 



THE EARLY GREEKS. 37 

" The reyolutions of such grand bodies could not take 
place, in the opinion of the Pythagoreans, without produc- 
ing a loud and powerful sound ; and as their distances from 
the central fire were supposed to be arranged in musical 
ratios, so the result of all these separate sounds was full and 
perfect harmony. To the objection, Why were not the 
sounds heard by us ? they replied that we had heard them 
constantly and without intermission from the hour of our 
birth ; hence they had become imperceptible by habit." 

Beautiful as was this theory — the origin of the phrase, 
"the music of the spheres" — it owed its perfection as a 
theory to a pure invention, resorted to in order to carry out 
the hypothesis of the sacred number Ten, of which all the 
greater numbers were only compounds and derivatiyes. This 
perfect and normal Ten, as a basis on which to rest a bold 
astronomical hypothesis, required the imagination of the 
Antichthon, or counter-earth, in order, with the other bod- 
ies, to make up the primordial number to whose generative 
force the whole of these bodies owed their origin. The re- 
sort to this conception of number, as a formative and active 
agent, was doubtless due to the fact that the Pythagoreans 
were the earliest cultivators of mathematical science. We 
are told, in fact, that they paved the way for Euclid and 
Archimedes, notwithstanding their symbolical and mystical 
fancies, and from their mathematical studies they were led 
to give exclusive supremacy to arithmetical and geometrical 
views of Xature. But what is curious about this whole 
speculation is, that in the invention or substitution of cer- 
tain facts in order to make a perfect theory, it resembles 
some modern hypotheses, in which facts have been assumed, 
or argued as existing from analogies, when there is no evi- 
dence which establishes them. Modern instances of this 
will appear hereafter. 

Enough has now been said about the speculations of the 
''early Greeks " to show the extravagance of Lord Macau- 



38 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

lay's assertion that the discoveries of modern astronomy 
have placed the modern philosopher in no better situation 
to make safe deductions in natural theology than that oc- 
cupied by the Hellenic philosophers from Thales to Plato. 
The evidences of design in the formation of the solar system^ 
— of that kind of design which acts in direct and specific 
exertions of a formative will — have been enormously multi- 
plied by the discoveries of modern astronomy. Those dis- 
coveries, instead of leaving us to grope among theories 
which require the invention or imagination of facts, relate 
to facts that are demonstrated ; and they tend in the 
strongest manner to establish the hypothesis of an infinite 
Creator, making laws to govern material objects, and then 
creating a system of objects to be governed by those laws. 
In a future chapter I shall endeavor to show why this hy- 
pothesis in regard to the solar system is most conformable 
to the rules of rational belief. 

Not to anticipate what will be said hereafter concerning 
the modern discoveries in anatomy and in comparative 
zoology, it is enough to say here that in the writings of the 
Greek philosophers, especially of Plato and Aristotle, we 
may discover what the Greeks knew or did not know, and 
may therefore compare their knowledge with what is now 
known. What was known about the human anatomy to 
the Greeks of Plato's time is probably pretty well reflected 
in his *' Timaeus," the celebrated dissertation in which he 
developed his theory of the Kosmos ; for, although Plato in 
that superb philosophical epic made use of the organs of 
the human body for ethical and theological purposes, and 
did not make a special study of matters of fact, it is not 
probable that in his mode of using them he so far departed 
from the received ideas of his time respecting the human 
anatomy that his treatise would have been regarded by his 
contemporaries as an absurdity. Indeed, Mr. Grote con- 
sidered that Plato had that anatomical knowledge which 



PLATO AND GALEN. 39 

an accomplislied man of his time could hardly fail to ac- 
quire without special study.* Moreover, even Galen, who 
came five centuries after Plato, and whose anatomical knowl- 
edge was far greater than could have been commanded in 
Plato's day, was wholly wrong in respect to the functions 
of some of the human organs. He agreed with Plato's 
ethical view of the human organism, but not in his physio- 
logical postulates. He considered, according to Mr. Grote, 
that Plato had demonstrated the hypothesis of one soul to 
be absurd ; he accepted Plato's triplicity of souls, but he 
located them differently. He held that there are three 
"originating and governing organs in the body : the brain, 
which is the origin of all the nerves, both of sensation and 
motion ; the heart, the origin of the arteries ; the liver, the 
sanguifacient organ, and the origin of the veins which dis- 
tribute nourishment to all parts of the body. These three 
are respectively the organs of the rational, the energetic, 
and the appetitive soul." f Plato, on the other hand, had 
placed the rational soul in the cranium, the energetic soul 
in the thoracic cavity, and the appetitive soul in the ab- 
dominal cavity ; he connected them by the line of the spi- 
nal marrow continuous with the brain, making the rational 
soul immortal, and the two inferior souls, or two divisions 
of one inferior soul, mortal. Galen did not decide what is 
the essence of the three souls, or whether they are immor- 
tal. Plato assigned to the liver a very curious function, or 
compound of functions, making it the assistant of the ra- 
tional soul in maintaining its ascendency over the appeti- 
tive soul, and at the same time making it the seat of those 
prophetic warnings which the gods would sometimes vouch- 
safe to the appetitive soul, especially when the functions of 
the rational soul are suspended, as in sleep, disease, or ec- 



* Grote, iii, 290. f Ibid., 287, 288. 



40 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

But while there was much scientific progress from Plato 
to Galen, and while Galen's physiological ideas of the func- 
tions of the brain, the heart, and the liver held their place 
until Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood in 
the seventeenth century, that discovery and the subsequent 
investigations proved that Galen, although not far wrong as 
to the brain, was wholly wrong as. to the liver, and partially 
wrong as to the heart. Yet Galen's physiological theories 
concerning these organs were founded on many anatomical 
facts and results of experiments, such as could then be 
made. 

There is another fact which marks the state of anatomi- 
cal knowledge among the Greeks in the time of Plato, and 
of Aristotle, who belonged to the same century. The 
"Timaeus" of Plato shows that there were physicians at 
that period, and that he was acquainted with the writings 
of Hippocrates. The important fact is, as stated by Mr. 
Grote, that "the study and practice of medicine was at 
that time greatly affected by the current speculations re- 
specting Nature as a whole ; accomplished physicians com- 
bined both lines of study, implicating cosmical and biologi- 
cal theories." * 

It is now only needful to say that modern anatomy and 
physiology afford aids to sound deductions in natural the- 
ology in reference to the structure of the human body as an 
animal organism, and all the functions of its different or- 
gans, which immeasurably transcend all that was known or 
assumed among the early Greeks, or in the time of Plato 
and Aristotle, or in the time of Galen. Notwithstanding 
the dispute whether the origin of man as an animal is to be 
referred to a special act of creation, or to the process of 
what has been called evolution, there can be no controversy 
on one point, namely, that modern anatomy and physiology 

* Grote, iii, 289. 



WHAT IS PROOF OF IMMORTALITY? 41 

have vastly increased our knowledge of the structure of the 
human frame, and the means of rational speculation upon 
the nature of intellect, as compared with any means that 
were possessed by the most accomplished and learned of the 
Greeks of antiquity. It matters little on which side of the 
controversy, between creation and evolution, the great anat- 
omists of the present day range themselves. It is upon 
the facts which their investigations have revealed that we 
have to judge of the probable truth of the one hypothesis 
or the other. The probable destiny of man as an immortal 
being is an inquiry that has certainly lost nothing by our 
increased knowledge of the facts in his animal structure 
which tend to support the hypothesis of design in his cre- 
ation. 

Lord Macaulay attributes an utter failure to the efforts 
of the philosophers, from Plato to Franklin, to ''prove" 
the immortality of the soul without the help of revelation. 
What did he mean by proof ? Eevelation is, of course, the 
only direct proof. It is so, because it is direct testimony 
of a fact, proceeding from the only source that can have 
direct and certain knowledge of that fact. When the evi- 
dences which are supposed to establish the existence and 
authority of the witness have become satisfactory to us, we 
are possessed of proof of our immortality, and this proof is 
the only direct evidence of which the fact admits, and it 
constitutes all that should be spoken of as proof. But there 
is collateral although inferior evidence — inferior, because it 
consists in facts which show a high degree of probability 
that the soul of man is immortal, although this kind of 
evidence is not like the direct testimony of a competent 
witness. Is all this presumptive evidence, with its weighty 
tendency to establish the probable truth of immortality, to 
be pronounced of no value, because it belongs to a different 
order of proof from that derived from the assertion of a 
competent witness to the fact ? It is one of the advantages 



4:2 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

of our situation in this life, that the collateral evidence 
which tends to show the high probability of a future state 
of existence is not withheld from us. As a supplemental 
aid to the direct teaching of reyelation, it is of inestimable 
importance if we do not obscure it by theories which per- 
vert its force, and if we reason upon it on sound philo- 
sophical principles. What we have to do in estimating the 
probable truth of our immortality, as shown by the science 
of natural religion, is to give the same force to moral evi- 
dence in this particular department of belief, that we give 
to the moral evidence which convinces us of many things 
of which we have no direct proof, or of which the direct 
proof lies in evidence of another kind. 

'*He knew as much about it," said Voltaire, *'as has 
been known in all ages — that is to say, very little indeed." 
This, like many of the witticisms of Voltaire, pressed into 
the service of an argument against the value of natural re- 
ligion at the present day when studied by mature and dis- 
ciplined minds, is quite out of place. What human reason 
has done in the course of three thousand years is not to be 
put on a par with the speculations of intelligent children 
or half-civilized men ; and although some of the riddles 
which perplexed Eliphaz and Zophar have not had a per- 
fectly satisfactory solution, it is quite wide from the truth 
to assert that there has been no approximation to a satis- 
factory solution, or that some of the riddles have not ceased 
to be the riddles which they were three thousand years ago. 
In that period there has been an accumulation of evidence 
concerning the phenomena of Nature, and the phenomena 
of mind, vast beyond comparison when placed in contrast 
with what was known in the tents of the Idumean emirs, 
and the importance of this accumulation of evidence is 
proved by the fact that theories have been built ujion it 
which undertake to explain it by hypotheses that were 
never heard of before, and which may possibly leave the 



DARWIN AND SPENCER. 43 

"riddles" in a far less satisfactory state than they were in 
the time of Job. On the other hand, while the companions 
of Job may have been unable to suggest to him any solution 
of the problems of life, it does not at all follow that we are 
as helpless as they were, even if we avail ourselves of noth- 
ing but what the science of natural theology can now teach 
us.* 

It will be seen that I attach great importance to natural 
theology. But I do not propose to write for the confirmed 
believers in revelation, on the one hand, who have become 
convinced by the evidence which supports revelation ; or for 
those, on the other hand, who believe nothing, and who 
have become confirmed in habits of thinking which unfit 
them for judging of the weight of evidence on such sub- 
jects as the existence of God and the creation of man. I 
write for that great mass of people of average intelligence, 
who do not understand accurately what the doctrine of 
evolution is as expounded by its leading representatives, 
and who do not know to what it leads. It will be found 
that in some respects there is a distinction between the 
school of which Darwin is the representative and the school 
which follows Spencer. To point out this distinction, and 
yet to show that both systems result in negatives which put 
an end to the idea of immortality, and that the weight of 
evidence is against both of them, is what I propose to do. 

* It should be stated that the passage from Macaulay's writings here 
commented on was written and first published in 1840, before the specu- 
lations of the scientists who maintain the doctrines of evolution had 
attracted much attention, or been promulgated in their present shape. 



CHAPTER 11. 

The Platonic Kosmos compared with the Darwinian theory of evolution. 

It is my purpose in this chapter to draw a parallel be- 
tween the theory of the origin of different animals pro- 
pounded in the "Timaeus" of Plato and that of Mr. Darwin. 
The analogy between them has been briefly hinted by Mr. 
Grote, but he has not followed it out in detail, as it was no 
part of his object to make minute comparisons between any 
of the speculations of Plato and those of modern philoso- 
phers. The great English scholar and critic seems to re- 
gard it as somewhat uncertain how far Plato meant in the 
"Timasus" to haye his description of the Kosmos stand as an 
expression of his own belief, or as a mere work of his imagi- 
nation and fancy. Plato, we are told, and this is quite ob- 
yious, dealt but little with facts, while he dealt largely with 
theories. But, even as a pure work of the imagination, or 
as a philosophical epic, the daring conception of the Kosmos 
is wonderfully complete ; and it will repay any one, who 
follows Mr. Grote in his analysis of it, to observe how Plato 
employs a process of degeneration to account for the forma- 
tion of different species of animals, from the higher to the 
lower, by agencies that bear a strong resemblance to those 
which are assumed by Darwin to have worked in the oppo- 
site process of variation and natural selection, resulting in 
the evolution of a higher from a lower animal. But, in 
order to render this comparison intelligible, it is necessary 
to make an abstract of Plato's system of the Kosmos before 
adverting to the analogies between that system and the 



PLATO'S DEMIURGUS. 45 

Darwinian theory. I follow, although I haye greatly con- 
densed, Mr. Grote's description of the Platonic Kosmos. 

According to the Platonic idea of the Kosmos, as given 
in the "Timaeus," there existed, anterior to all time, primor- 
dial matter in a state of chaos. This matter was not cre- 
ated ; for, according to Mr. Grote, whose authority upon 
such a point is the highest, the notion of absolute creation 
was unknown to the Greeks of antiquity, and it does not 
appear that Plato suggests it. But, without accounting for 
its existence, Plato assumes that there was matter in a con- 
dition of utter chaos before time could have had an exist- 
ence ; and, in order to make the chaotic condition the more 
impressive in its primitive destitution of all form or active 
principles tending to union or arrangement, he supposes 
that the four elements of fire, air, earth, and water had no 
existence save in the abstract, or as ideas and forms. But, 
as abstract ideas, these four elements of fire, air, earth, aod 
water were distinct, self-existing, and indestructible, coeval 
with the chaotic matter which was waiting to receive their 
impress and to take on their distinctive elemental charac-- 
ters. They had already begun to act on the fundamentum, 
or primordial chaotic matter, as upon a recipient, but it 
was in a confused way and without regularity of plan, so 
that they had not become concrete existences or determi- 
nate agents. 

In this state of things there appears upon the scene the 
Demiurgus, a being coeval with the chaos of matter, that is, 
self-existing and eternal. But, consistently with the phi- 
losophy which did not admit of the idea of absolute crea- 
tion, the Demiurgus was not a creator, but an architect or 
designer, working on materials that lay within his reach. 
His moral attribute was goodness, which was, in his situ- 
ation, synonymous with order, regularity, symmetry, and 
proportion, and, along with this tendency, he had supreme 
artistic skill. In other words, he was the personification of 



k 



46 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

vov^, or reason, working against necessity : the latter being, 
not what we mean by that term, something preordained 
and fixed, but confusion, uncertainty, irregularity, and un- 
reason, which are to be overcome by their opposites. 

Besides the chaotic matter and the ideas or forms of the 
four elements, as yet unrealized in the actual substances of 
fire, air, earth, and water, there were coeyal ideas or forms 
of animals, or, as we should say, abstract animals, or con- 
ceptions of animals. The first and grandest of these was 
the eternal self-animal, or the ideal of animal existence. 
Next came the ideas or forms of four other animals : 1. The 
celestial gods ; 2. Man ; 3. Birds, or animals living in air ; 
4. Land or water animals. Bearing in mind that we are 
still in the region of abstract conceptions in regard to these 
types of animals, which as yet have no concrete existence, 
and that they are, so to speak, the intellectual models from 
which the Demiurgus is to work, in order to make the real 
animals conformably to the pre-existing and eternal plan, 
we come to the process of forming the Kosmos, which is to 
be the containing animal of all the other four. Out of the 
confused chaos of existing matter the Demiurgus proceeds 
to construct the Kosmos, which was to become the one self- 
animal, by impressing the idea or abstract form of animal 
upon a physical structure built out of the primordial cha- 
otic matter and comprehending the whole of it. The first 
step was to bring the four elements of fire, air, earth, and 
water out of their chaotic and confused condition by sepa- 
rating them according to the forms of their eternal ideas. 
The total of each element, when made to take its normal 
form, was used in the construction of the Kosmos, which 
thus came to possess the whole existing body of material ; 
"so that," to borrow the words of Mr. Grote, "there re- 
mained nothing of the four elements apart, to hurt the 
Kosmos from without, nor anything as raw material for a 
second Kosmos." 



SOUL OF THE KOSMOS. 47 

The Kosmos was made a perfect sphere, and with a per- 
fectly smooth outer surface, without organs of sight or 
hearing, because there was nothing outside to be seen or 
heard ; without organs of respiration, because there was no 
outside atmosphere to be breathed ; and without nutritive 
or excrementory organs, because it was self-sufficing, being 
supplied with nourishment by its own decay. It was not 
furnished with limbs or means of locomotion or standing, 
because, being a sphere turning on an axis, and having only 
one of the seven possible varieties of movement, namely, 
rotation in a circle in one and the same plane, there was 
nothing for it to grasp or repel.* This body, the only-be- 
gotten, because in its formation all existing bodily material 
was employed, perfectly spherical and smooth, equidistant 
from its center to all points of its circumference, and sus- 
pended upon its own axis traversing its diameter, was now 
to be animated by a soul. 

The Demiurgus, in the formation of the soul of the 
Kosmos, took three constituent ingredients and mixed 
them together. They were : 1. The Same, or the Identical, 
the indivisible and unchangeable essence of Ideas ; 2. The 
Different, or the Plural, the divisible essence of bodies or of 
the elements ; 3. A compound of both of these ingredients 
melted into one. Blended together in one grand compound, 
these three ingredients formed the soul of the Kosmos by 
first dividing the mixture into different portions, and then 
uniting the portions according to a complicated scale of 
harmonious numerical proportions. The outer or sidereal 
sphere of the Kosmos was made to receive the Same, or 
Identity, by being placed in an even and undivided rota- 
tion toward the right, turning on the great axis of the 
whole sphere. The interior, or planetary spheres, the five 

* Rotation was considered the movement most conformable to reason 
and intelligence, and it is impracticable to any figure but tbe spherical. 
Grote, iii, 253. 



48 OREATIOIsr OR EVOLUTION? 

planets, and the sun and the moon, were made to be 
under the influence of the Different, or Diyersity — that is 
to say, their rotations on their separate axes, all oblique, 
were toward the left, while the overpowering force of 
rotation of the outer sphere carried them along with it, 
although the time of their separate rotations was more or 
less modified by their own inherent and countermoving 
forces. 

Thus the sentient capacity of the cosmical soul became 
the cognition of the Same and the Different, and the blended 
Same and Different, because it embodied these three in- 
gredients in its own nature. It was invisible ; rooted at 
its center and pervading and inclosing the whole visible 
body, circulating and communicating, without voice or 
sound, all impressions and information . concerning the 
existing relations between the separate parts and specialties 
of the cosmical body. 

Anterior to the Kosmos there was no time. "With the 
rotation of the Kosmos time began. It was marked first 
by the eternal and unchanging rotation of the outer circle, 
in which were placed the fixed stars, which revolved with 
it in unaltered position with regard to each other ; and one 
revolution of this outer or most rational circle made a day. 
The sun, moon, and planets were distributed in different 
portions of the Circle of the Different ; one revolution of 
the moon marking a month, and one revolution of the sun 
marking a year. The earth, the first and oldest of the 
sidereal and planetary gods, was packed around the great 
axis which ran through the center of the Kosmos, and 
turned that axis ; so that the earth regulated the move- 
ment of the great cosmical axis, and was the determining 
agent of night and day. 

Thus far we have the formation of the Kosmos, animated 
with a pervading soul, the body being formed out of the 
whole of existing matter, molded into the specific elements 



THE PRIMITIVE GODS. 49 

of fire, air, earth, and water, and the soul being formed out 
of the constituent ingredients furnished by the eternal and 
invisible essence of ideas. The whole, body and soul of the 
Kosmos, was thus an animal, formed on the abstract but 
eternal idea or form of an animal which had existed before 
time began. We now approach the formation of the other 
animals. Of the Kosmos there could be but one. All ex- 
isting material of matter had been used in his construction. 
He could not become a species, as there could be no second 
Kosmos. Something could be borrowed from him, for the 
formation of other animals, but nothing could be destroyed. 
He was not yet, however, a full copy of the model of the 
Generic Animal or Idea of Animal, because the eternal 
plan of that model required that he should be peopled or 
inhabited by four other animals, which might constitute 
species. Accordingly, the Demiurgus proceeds to form the 
first of these sub-animals, the gods, who are to inhabit 
different portions of the Kosmos. The first of these in 
formation was the earth, planted in the center, and made 
sentinel over night and day ; next the fixed stars, formed 
chiefly out of fire, and placed in the outer* circle of a fixed 
revolution, or the Circle of the Same, to give to it light 
and brilliancy. The sidereal orbs thus became animated 
beings, eternal and divine. They remained constantly 
turning round in the same relative position, but the sun, 
moon, and planets, belonging to the Circle of the Different, 
and trying to revolve by their own effort in a direction 
opposite to that of the outer sphere, became irregular in 
their revolutions and varied in their relative positions. 
Thus the primitive gods were the earth and the fixed stars, 
which revolved without variation with the Circle of the 
Same, and became immortal as well as visible ; while the 
sun, moon, and planets were not among the primitive 
gods, but were simply spherical bodies placed in the inner 
Circle of the Different. The primitive gods preside over 



k 



50 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

and regulate the Kosmos. From them are generated and 
descended the remaining gods.* 

Having completed the Kosmos and the primitive gods, 
the Demiurgus paused in his work. There were still other 
animals to be constructed, the first and noblest of which 
was to be Man. But the Demiurgus, who, in the con- 
struction of these gods, had made them immortal, not in 

* The primitive gods of Plato's conception (in the " TimsBus ") are not 
to be confounded with the gods of the poetic and popular faith. As Mr. 
Grote has pointed out, there is nothing more remarkable in Plato's writings 
than the subtilty and skill with which he contrived to elude the charge of 
impiety and infidelity toward the gods of tradition and of the popular 
faith. In a passage of the " Timeeus," on which Mr. Grote seems to be in 
doubt whether it was ironical or sincere, Plato boldly confronts the diffi- 
culty by saying that we must believe competent witnesses whose testimony 
we have, respecting the genesis of the remaining gods who have personal 
names and were believed in by his contemporaries. For his own part, he 
says, he does not pretend to account for their generation. The sons of the 
gods, the heroic and sacred families, who must have known their own 
fathers and all about their own family affairs, have given us their family 
traditions, and we must obey the law and believe. But concerning the 
primitive gods, the first progenitors of the remaining gods, we are at 
liberty to speculate. The ingenuity of this admission of authority where 
authority has spoken, reconcilable with speculation upon matters on which 
authority has not spoken, is admirable. Plato, as Mr. Grote has observed, 
was willing to incur the risk of one count of the indictment which was 
brought against his master Socrates, that of introducing new divine per- 
sons. In legal parlance he might have demurred to this count, as not 
charging any offense against the established religion. But the other count, 
for not acknowledging the gods whom the city acknowledged, he did not 
choose to encounter. As to them, he prudently, and perhaps sarcastically, 
accepts the testimony of witnesses who speak by inspiration and authority. 
But as to the primitive gods, the progenitors of the gods from whom were 
descended the heroic and sacred families of men, he expresses in the 
" Timseus " his own convictions, without appealing to authority and without 
intimating that he is speaking of mysteries beyond the comprehension of 
his reason. The boldness of this flight beyond all authority into the realms 
of pure reason is very striking, even if it does end in nothing but proba- 
bility, which is all that Plato claims for his theory. 



THE SOUL OF MAN. 61 

their own nature but through his determination, seems 
to have apprehended that, if he proceeded to construct the 
other animals himself, they would likewise be thereby ren- 
dered of immortal duration. He therefore assembled the 
newly generated gods and made to them a personal address. 
He informed them of their immortal existence, and of his 
purpose to confide to them the construction of the other 
animals, stating at the same time, in the case of man, that 
he would himself supply an immortal element which they 
were to incorporate with a mortal body, in imitation of the 
power which he had exercised in the generation of them- 
selves. He then proceeded to compound together, but in 
inferior perfection and purity, the remnant of the same 
elements out of which he had formed the cosmical soul.* 
He then distributed the whole of 'this mass into souls equal 
in number to the fixed stars, placed each of them in a star 
of its own, where it would be carried round in the cosmi- 
cal rotation, explained to it its immortal destiny, and that 
at an appointed hour of birth it would be transferred into 
a mortal body in conjunction with two inferior kinds of 
soul or mind. These irrational enemies, the two inferior 
souls, the rational and immortal soul would have to con- 
trol and subdue, so as to live a good life. If it triumphed 
in the conflict, it would return after death to its own star, 
where in an everlasting abode it would dwell forever in 
unison with the celestial harmonies and perfections of the 
outer sphere. But, if it failed, it would be born again into 

* It must be remembered that, in the formation of the cosmical soul, 
the ingredients were the eternal Ideas ; of these there could be a remnant 
after the cosmical soul was formed. But the cosmical body, which was 
formed out of the material elements, comprehended the whole of them, and 
there could be no remnant or surplus of them remaining outside. But 
portions of them could be borrowed for a limited period of mortal exist- 
ence, and would return to their place in the Kosmos when that existence 
terminated. If 'this distinction be carried along, Plato vrill not be found 
to be inconsistent with himself. 
4 



t 



62 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

an inferior body, and on the death of that body, if it con- 
tinued evil, it would be again born into a still more de- 
graded animal, through an indefinite transmigration from 
animal to animal, until the rational soul should have ob- 
tained the mastery over the irrational and turbulent, when 
it would be released and permitted to return to its own 
peculiar star.* Here, then, the Demiurgus retired, leaving 
to the gods the work of fabricating mortal bodies for man, 
and two mortal and inferior souls, with which the immor- 
tal soul was to be joined. But before he withdrew he in- 
culcated upon the gods to construct the new mortal animal 
in the best manner, so that the immortal soul should have 
the fairest chance of guiding and governing rightly, in 
order that the auimal might not be the cause of mischief 
and misery to himself ; a possible and even probable result 
which the Demiurgus proclaimed beforehand, thus reliev- 
ing himself of responsibility, and casting it, it would seem, 
upon the gods, f The latter stood, then, in the position of 
workmen, who have received certain directions from a 
superior architect, have been supplied with certain materi- 
als, and are obliged to conform to a prescribed model, the 

. * It does not distinctly appear what was to become of the rational soul 
if it finally failed in the conflict with evil, at the lowest end of the trans- 
migration. Being immortal, it could not perish. But in providing for it 
an opportunity of final success through all the forms of animal life to 
which it might be condemned, it would seem that Plato was pressed by a 
reluctance to encounter the idea of endless misery. This point, however, 
does not obscure his explanation of the process by which species of ani- 
mals, and a succession of inferior animals, came to exist. 

f Mr. Grote has pointed out that in his other writings, notably in the 
" Republic " and in the " Leges," Plato is not consistent with this idea that 
the gods are responsible for the evil that man causes to himself ; and that 
in the " Timseus " he plainly makes the Demiurgus responsible, because he 
brings, or allows to be brought, an immortal soul down from its star, where 
it was living pure, intelligent, and in harmony with reason, and makes it 
incur corruption, disturbance, and stupidity, by junction with a mortal 
body and two mortal and inferior souls. 



TRIPLICITY OF SOULS. 53 

cosmical animal, as far as circumstances will allow. The 
Demiurgus retires, and leaves the gods to their work. 

They borrow from the Kosmos, from which they are 
permitted to obtain materials, portions of the four ele- 
ments, for the construction of the human body, with an 
engagement that these materials shall one day be returned. 
These they unite in one body by numerous minute and 
invisible fastenings ; over this body they place a head or 
cranium, into which they introduce the immortal soul, 
making the head, with its spherical form like that of the 
Kosmos, and admitting of no motion but the rotary, the 
most divine portion of the human system and master of 
the body, which is to be subject and ministerial. To the 
body they give all the six varieties of motive power, for- 
ward, backward, upward, downward, to the right and to 
the left. The phenomena of nutrition and sensation begin 
as soon as the connection is formed between the immortal 
soul and the mortal body, but as the irregular movements 
and agitations arising from the diverse rotations of the 
Same and the Different convey false and foolish affirmations 
to the soul in the cranium, that soul is destitute of intelli- 
gence when first joined to the body, and remains so for 
some time. But gradually these disturbing currents abate, 
the rotations of the Same and the Different in the head 
become more regular, and the man becomes more intelli- 
gent. 

It is now necessary to account for the introduction of 
the two mortal souls, and to show how the conflict ap- 
pointed for the immortal soul became the test of a life 
which was to determine whether the latter should be per- 
mitted, on the death of the body, to return to its peculiar 
star, or whether it should be degraded into some lower 
form of animal. The immortal soul has its special abode 
in the head, which is both united to and separated from 
the trunk by the neck. The gods kept the two mortal 



64 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

souls separate, so that the rational or immortal soul might 
be defiled by the contact as little as possible. The better 
portion of the mortal soul they placed in the thoracic 
cavity. It was the energetic, courageous, contentious soul, 
placed above the diaphragm, so as to receive orders easily 
from the head, and to aid the rational soul in keeping the 
mutinous soul of appetite, which was placed below the 
diaphragm, in subjection. 

It is unnecessary to follow here the minute anatomical 
descriptions which Plato gives of the different organs of 
the human body, or of the way in which they are supposed 
to act on the two divisions of the mortal soul, or to be 
acted on by them, or the mode in which the latter act 
upon the encephalic or immortal soul which is seated in 
the cranium. These descriptions evince much knowledge 
of the human anatomy, and probably all the knowledge 
that was possessed in Plato's time. It is immaterial how 
far this anatomical knowledge was correct, and of course 
there was in Plato's use of the various organs a great deal 
that was fanciful. It is sufficient, without following Mr. 
Grote's analysis through these details, to note that, in 
Plato's arrangement, the immortal soul was supposed to be 
fastened in the brain, the two mortal souls in the line of 
the spinal marrow continuous with the brain, and that this 
line formed the thread of connection between them all. 

Passing on toward the point where the process of degra- 
dation might begin, which would result in the reduction 
of this new and divinely constructed animal to a lower 
form, we have to note, first, that it was made a non-sexual 
animal, being intended for an angelic type. In the origi- 
nal plan of the gods, it was not contemplated that this 
primitive type should reproduce itself by any process of 
generation. According to the original scheme, it would 
seem that every time a new immortal soul was to be 
brought down from its peculiar star, the process of con- 



ORIGIN OF THE SEXES. 55 

structing for it a mortal body would have to be repeated. 
Plato, Mr. Grote observes, does indeed tell us that the 
primitive non-sexual type had the option of maintaining 
itself. But this must mean that each individual of that 
type had the option of maintaining itself in its struggle 
with the debasing influences of appetite and disease. But 
not one representative of it has held his ground ; and as it 
was foreseen that such an angelic type could not maintain 
itself, we are to look for a reconstruction of the whole 
organism. This came about from the degeneracy of the 
primitive non -sexual animal below the standard of good life 
which it had the option of continuing. Men whose lives 
had fallen below this standard became effeminate, cowardly, 
unjust. In their second birth, their immortal souls had to 
be translated into a body resembling that to which they had 
debased the first body into which they were born. The first 
transition, therefore, was from man into woman. In other 
words, the gods, seeing that the non-sexual primitive type 
did not maintain itself at the high point intended for it, 
reconstructed the whole organism upon the bi-sexual prin- 
ciple, introducing the comparatively lower type of woman. 
A partial transformation of the male structure makes the 
female. A suitable adjustment of the male organs, and 
the implanting of the sexual impulse in both sexes, by the 
agency of the gods, make provision for generative repro- 
duction, and a species is formed, which takes the place of 
the primitive non-sexual type which did not reproduce itself 
in the original scheme. The primitive type disappears, and 
it disappears by a process of degradation, which it under- 
goes by reason of its failure to avail itself of the option 
which it originally had of living a good life that would en- 
title the immortal soul to return to its peculiar star with- 
out further conflict with the debasing tendencies to which 
it was exposed in the first body that it inhabited. 

In this curious theory we see how a process of declen- 



66 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

sion or degradation is induced by what may almost be 
called a choice, since the primitive human being, by not 
resisting the debasing tendencies of his lower nature, is 
made by those tendencies to assume a less divine form than 
that in which he originally existed. To the primitive man 
the gods assigned the encephalic or head-soul, which was 
connected with and suspended from the divine soul of the 
Kosmos. They assigned it to each man as his presiding 
genius. If he neglected it, and directed all his develop- 
ment toward the energetic or appetitive mortal soul, he 
would become debased. He did so. Hence it became 
necessary for the gods to reconstruct the whole organism, 
and in this reconstruction the primitive non-sexual type be- 
comes the bi-sexual, and a species is formed. 

It is not necessary to enter into the metaphysical argu- 
ment which relates to the question of responsibility for this 
change from the original plan. Plato tells us that the 
gods foresaw it as a necessary consequence of the original 
scheme ; and, moreover, that they foresaw that they must 
make preparation for the still more degenerate varieties of 
birds and quadrupeds, into which the corrupt and stupid 
part of mankind would sink, all of which were according 
to the great eternal scheme of the four kinds of ideal 
animals embraced in the idea of the Kosmos itself. But 
with the moral justice of the whole theory we have no con- 
cern here. We are here concerned, first, with the nature of 
the process by which, in the Platonic theory, the bi-sexual 
human race became formed out of the primitive non-sexual 
type ; and, next, with the process by which individuals of 
this race became degraded into the lower animals.* 

* I have omitted the description of the influence of disease induced by 
an over-indulgence of appetite, etc., in aiding the process of debasement 
from the primitive type. The reader can find this influence developed in 
Grote, or can consult the original Greek of the " Timseus." It would appear 
that Plato considered the effect of all the appetites, when too much in- 



BIRDS AND LAND ANIMALS. 57 

After the process of degradation had begun, after the 
primitive type had given place to the bi-sexual human race, 
and a species was thus formed, further degradation would 
be inevitable under the same causes which produced the first 
one. The female part of mankind would go on bringing 
forth new males and new females, and to each one at birth 
there would come from its peculiar star an immortal soul, 
for I do not understand that Plato's women were supposed 
not to be constructed, in this respect, upon the same plan 
as the men. But each, of these newly arrived immortal 
souls would be placed in a mortal body in contact and con- 
flict with the two mortal souls of appetite, disturbance, and 
mutiny against the divine laws of reason. Each new human 
being would then be exposed to further debasement, by 
which his or her human organs and human form would 
undergo transformation into a lower type of animal life. 
Accordingly, we find that Plato, in perfect consistency with 
his theory, supposes that birds are a degraded birth or 
formation derived from one peculiar mode of degeneracy in 
man, hair being transmuted into feathers and wings. If 
we inquire from what kind of men the birds were formed, 
and how they came to be assigned to the air, we shall best 
learn from the words employed by Mr. Grote to express 
Plato's idea : " Birds were formed from the harmless but 
light, airy, and superficial men, who, though carrying their 
minds aloft to the study of cosmical phenomena, studied 
them by visual observation and not by reason, foolishly 
imagining that thev had discovered the way of reaching 
truth."* 

Next to the birds came the land-animals, a more brutal 
formation. These, to borrow the words of Mr. Grote's 
analysis, " proceeded from men totally destitute of philoso- 

dulgcd, as tending in the primitive non-sexual type toward the development 
of that lower kind of animal which the gods saw fit to treat as fit only to 
become woman. * Grote. 



58 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

phy, who neither looked up to the heavens nor cared for 
celestial objects ; from men making no use whatever of the 
rotations of their encephalic soul, but following exclusively 
the guidance of the lower soul in the trunk. Through such 
tastes and occupations, both their heads and their anterior 
limbs became dragged down to the earth by the force of 
affinity. Moreover, when the rotation of the encephalic 
soul from want of exercise became slackened and fell into 
desuetude, the round form of the cranium was lost and be- 
came converted into an oblong or some other form. These 
now degenerated into quadrupeds and multipeds, the gods 
furnishing a greater number of feet in proportion to the 
stupidity of each, in order that its approximation to earth 
might be multiplied. To some of the more stupid, how- 
ever, the gods gave no feet or limbs at all, constraining them 
to drag the whole length of their bodies along the ground, 
and to become reptiles. Out of the most stupid and sense- 
less of mankind, by still greater degeneracy, the gods 
formed fishes, or aquatic animals — the fourth and lowest 
genus after men, birds, land-animals. This race of beings, 
from their extreme want of mind, were not considered 
worthy to live on earth, or to respire thin and pure air. 
They were condemned to respire nothing but deep and tur- 
bid water, many of them, as oysters and other descriptions 
of shell-fish, being fixed down at the lowest depth or bot- 
tom. It is by such transitions (concludes the Platonic 
* Timaeus ') that the different races of animals passed origi- 
nally, and still continue to pass, into each other. The in- 
terchange is determined by the acquisition or loss of reason 
or rationality.*' * 

Here, then, we have a process of degradation by which 
the different races of animals were formed, by a kind of 
selection which, commencing in the human species from the 
neglect of the encephalic soul to maintain its high duties 

* Grote's "Plato," ui, 282. 



PARALLEL BETWEEN PLATO AND DAEWIN. 59 

and aims, goes on in successive debasements wliich result in 
the f onnation of lower and still lower animals until we reach 
the shell-fish fixed upon the earth at the bottom of the 
water. The bi-sexual principle of construction haying been 
introduced in the human species, was continued through 
all the other species formed by the still descending process 
of deterioration, so that to each successive species there re- 
mained the power of reproducing its own type, along with 
the tendency to evolve a lower type by further loss of rea- 
son or rationality. It is not material to the purpose of the 
parallel, which I am about to draw between the Platonic and 
the Darwinian system, to consider the precise nature of the 
Platonic idea of an intelligent power, by which these suc- 
cessive degradations were in one sense purposely ordained. 
Enough is apparent on the Platonic system to show that, 
while these degradations were according to an eternal plan, 
because they resulted from the conflict between reason and 
unreason, order and disorder, between purity and impuri- 
ty, yet the different species of animals, after man, were not 
special creations by an infinite power interfering in each 
case by a separate exercise of creative will. They were a 
growth of an inferior organization out of a superior through 
the inevitable operation of tendencies which changed the 
forms of the animals. As fast as these tendencies operated 
— and they were continually operating — the ministers of the 
Demiurgus, the gods, stood ready to adapt the structure to 
the new conditions in which the tendencies resulted, so 
that the new animal might be fitted to and fixed in those 
conditions. Still, the gods are not represented as making 
separate creations of new species as an act of their will, 
without the pre-existing operation in the preceding type of 
tastes and occupations which modify the structure into one 
of a more degraded character. It may thus be said with 
entire truth that the Platonic idea of the origin of the dif- 
ferent races of animals presents a parallel to the Darwinian 



60 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

theory, in which it will be found that the one is the reverse 
of the other, both of them proceeding upon and involving 
analogous principles of evolution, operating in the one sys- 
tem from below upward, and in the other from a higher 
point downward. If, in the Platonic system, the idea of 
an original immortal soul placed in a heavenly abode, but 
afterward brought down and fixed in a mortal body, is the 
starting-point — if a conflict of a spiritual and angelic ex- 
istence with corporeal and earthly tendencies is at first the 
predominant fact — the parallel between the Platonic pro- 
cess of degradation and the Darwinian process of elevation 
remains the same ; for, in the one system, reason degener- 
ates into instinct, and instinct at last reaches its lowest pos- 
sible action, or ceases entirely ; and, in the other, instinct 
rises from its lowest action through successive improve- 
ments until it becomes mind or intellect : so that some- 
where in the two processes there must be a point where 
they pass each other in opposite directions, the one losing 
or merging intellect in instinct, the other losing and merg- 
ing instinct in mind, each of the two processes being a pro- 
cess of development or evolution, but in opposite direc- 
tions.* 

It is not easy to ascertain at once what was Mr. Dar- 
win's idea of the mode in which a supreme intelligence has 
presided over the creation. In his work on " The Descent 
of Man," he adduces some evidence that man was not 
" originally endowed with the ennobling belief in the exist- 
ence of an Omnipotent God," this evidence being that nu- 
merous savage races have existed, and still exist, who have 
had and have no words in their language to express this 
idea. But this, if true, does not help us to understand 
what part in Mr. Darwin's theory an Omnipotent God is 
supposed to play. Scattered through the same work we 

* See, as to the reception of the Platonic Demiurgus by the Alexandrian 
Jews, first chapter. 



IMMOETALITY. 61 

find references to the hypothesis of such a being, and to the 
influences which this belief has exerted upon the advance of 
morality. But I assume that we are to understand that Mr. 
Darwin adopts as a fact, to be taken into account in judg- 
ing of his theory of evolution, that there is such a being as 
an Omnipotent God, having equally the power to make 
separate creations, or to establish certain laws of matter, and 
to leave them to operate through secondary causes in the 
production and extinction of the past and present inhabit- 
ants of the world. In his work on the '^ Origin of Species " 
he refers to ''what we know of the laws impressed upon 
matter by the Creator."* In his "Descent of Man" the 
following passage occurs toward the close of the work : 
" He who believes in the advancement of man from some 
low organized form will naturally ask, How does this bear 
on the belief in the immortality of the soul ? The barba- 
rous races of man, as Sir J. Lubbock has shown, possess no 
clear belief of this kind ; but arguments, derived from the 
primeval beliefs of savages, are, as we have just seen, of 
little or no avail. Few persons feel any anxiety from the 
impossibility of determining at what precise period in the 
development of the individual, from the first trace of a 
minute germinal vesical, man becomes an immortal being ; 
and there is no greater cause for anxiety, because the period 
can not possibly be determined in the gradually ascending 
organic scale." 

Surely it is a most pertinent inquiry. How does his the- 
ory of the advancement of man from some lower organized 
form bear on the immortality of the soul ? and it is no an- 
swer to this inquiry to say that upon no hypothesis of man's 
origin can we determine at what precise period he becomes 
an immortal being. That the idea of an Omnipotent God, 
capable of creating a spiritual essence, or an immortal soul, 

* " Origin of Species," p. 428, American edition, from the sixth Eng- 
lish. New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1882. 



62 OKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

is not denied by Mr. Darwin, is doubtless to be inferred 
from his strong affirmation that our minds refuse to accept 
as the result of blind chance the grand sequence of events 
which the birth both of the species and the individual 
presents to our view. That variations of structure, the 
union of pairs in marriage, the dissemination of seeds, and 
similar events, have all been ordained for some special pur- 
pose, is the hypothesis according to which he regards them 
as events brought about by the laws of natural selection, 
which laws were ordained by the Creator and left to operate. 
Now, while this hypothesis excludes, or tends to exclude, 
the idea of blind chance, it still remains to be considered 
whether the soul of man, or the essence which we call in- 
tellect, is in each case a direct creation of a special charac- 
ter, or whether it is a result from the operation of the laws 
which have been ordained for the action of organized matter. 
If it is the former, the soul may survive the destruction 
of the body. If it is the latter, the soul as well as all the 
other manifestations or exhibitions which the material body 
gives forth in its action, may and in all probability must 
cease with the organs whose action leads us falsely to be- 
lieve that we are animated by an immortal spirit while we 
are in the flesh. If it is a necessary result of any theory 
that what is supposed to be the immortal soul of man is a 
product of the operation of certain laws imposed upon or- 
ganized matter, without being a special creation of some- 
thing distinct from matter, it is immaterial whether the 
organized form of matter with which the soul is connected, 
or appears to act for a time, was a special creation, or was 
an evolution out of some lower form, or came by blind 
chance. JSTor is it material that we can not determine at 
what precise period in the genesis of the individual, by the 
ordinary process of reproduction, he becomes an immortal 
being. The question is. Does he ever become an immortal 
being, if in body and in mind he is a mere product of or- 



NOT A QUESTION OF POWER. 63 

ganized matter, formed from some lower type through the 
laws of variation and natural selection, resulting in an 
animal whose manifestations or exhibitions of what we call 
intellect or mind are manifestations of the same nature as 
the instincts of the lower animals, differing only in degree ? 
That I may not be misunderstood, and especially that I 
may not be charged with misrepresentation, I will state the 
case for the Darwinian theory as strongly as I can. ( The 
question here is obyiously not a question of power. An 
Omnipotent Creator has just the same capacity to make 
special creations, by a direct and special exertion of his 
will, as he has to make one primordial type and place 
it under fixed laws that will in their operation cause a 
physical organization to act in such a way as to evolve 
out of it other and more or less perfect types. / In either 
method of action, he would be the same Omnipotent God, 
by whose will all things would exist ; and I assume that 
upon this point there is no difference between some of 
the evolution school and its opponents. But in considering 
the question of the origin of the human soul, or the intel- 
lect of man, we are dealing not with a question of power, 
but with the probable method in which the conceded Om- 
nipotent capacity has acted. On the one hand, we have 
the hypothesis that the Eternal and Omnipotent capacity 
has created a spiritual and immortal being, capable of ex- 
isting without any union with the body that is formed out 
of earthly material, but placed for a time in unison with 
such a body ; and that for the effectual purpose of this 
temporary union this body has been specially constructed, 
and constructed in two related forms, male and female, so 
that this created species of animal may perpetuate itself by 
certain organic laws of reproduction. Now it is obviously 
immaterial that we can not detect the point of time, or the 
process, at or by which the union between the spiritual 
essence and the earthly body takes place in the generation 



h 



64 CKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

of the individual. It is conceded to be alike impossible 
to detect the time or mode in which descendants of the 
lower animals, which had nothing resembling intellect, 
become endowed with and inhabited by intellect, through 
the supposed laws of variation and natural selection, operat- 
ing to produce an animal of a more elaborate organization. 
/The point of divergence between the two hypotheses is pre- 
cisely this : that the one supposes the mind of man to be a 
special creation, of a spiritual nature, designed to be im- 
mortal, but placed in union with a mortal body for a tem- 
porary purpose. The other h3rpothesis supposes no special 
creation of either the mind or the body of man, but main- 
tains that the latter is evolved out of some lower animal, 
and that the former is evolved out of the action of physical 
organization.*/ Either mode of projecting and executing 
the creation of both the body and the mind of man is of 
course competent to an Omnipotent God. The question is. 
Which mode has the highest amount of probability on which 
to challenge our belief ? If the one, as it is described, 
leads to the conclusion that the mind can not survive the 
body, and the other leads to the conclusion that it can, we 
are left to choose between them : and our choice must be 
determined by what we can discover of satisfactory proof 
that the mind of man was destined to become immortal. 
What, then, is the Darwinian theory of the origin of man as 
an animal, and to what does it lead respecting the origin 
and nature of the human soul ? 

Whoever will carefully examine Mr. Darwin's hypothe- 

* Mr. Darwin refers to Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory of " the necessary 
acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation " ; and indeed 
it is apparent that this class of philosophers have constructed a theory 
which denies the creation of the human mind as a spiritual essence, inde- 
pendent of matter, although some of them may adhere to the idea that it 
was God who caused matter to evolve out of its own action the substance 
or existence that we call mind. 



DARWIN'S NATURAL SELECTION. 65 

sis of the descent of man as an animal, will find that com- 
mencing at a point opposite to that at which Plato began 
his speculations, the modern naturalist assumes the exist- 
ence of a very low form of animated and organized mat- 
ter, destitute of anything in the nature of reason, even if 
acting under what may be called instinctive and uncon- 
scious impulses, imposed upon it by the preordained laws 
by which animated matter is to act. By some process of 
generation, either bi-sexual or uni-sexual or non-sexual, this 
very low type of animal is endowed with a power of repro- 
ducing other individuals of the same structure and hab- 
its. In process of time, for which we must allow periods 
very much longer than those of which we are accustomed 
to think in relation to recorded history, the individuals of 
this species become enormously multiplied. A struggle for 
existence takes place between these very numerous individ- 
uals ; and in this struggle there comes into operation the 
law to which Mr. Darwin has given the name of " natural 
selection," which is but another name for a series of events. 
He does not mean by this term to imjoly a conscious choice 
on the part of the animals, nor an active power or interfer- 
ing deity. He employs it to express a constantly occurring 
series of events or actions, by which, in certain circum- 
stances, animals secure themselves against the tendency to 
destruction which is caused by the great disparity between 
their numbers and the amount of food that is accessible to 
them, or by the unfavorable influences of a change of cli- 
mate upon so great a body of individuals. He calls this 
series of events or actions natural selection, in order, as I 
understand, to compare what takes place in nature with 
what takes place when a breeder of animals purposely se- 
lects the most favorable individuals for the purpose of im- 
proving or varying the breed. In nature, the selection is 
supposed to operate as follows : The strongest and most 
active individuals of a species of animals have the best 



66 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

chance of securing the requisite amount of food from the 
supply that is insufficient for all. They do this by their 
greater fleetness in oyertaking the common prey, or by mak- 
ing war upon the more feeble or inactive of their fellows ; 
and numerous indiyiduals are either directly destroyed by 
this warfare, or are driven off from the feeding-ground and 
perish for want of nourishment. Thus the best specimens 
of the race survive ; and to this occurrence is given the name 
of the " survival of the fittest," meaning the survival of those 
individuals best fitted to continue their own existence and 
to continue their species. A physical change in the country 
inhabited by a great multitude of individuals of a certain 
species, or by different species — for example, a change of cli- 
mate — operates to make this struggle for existence still more 
severe, and the result would be that those individuals of the 
same species which could best adapt themselves to their new 
condition would tend to be preserved, as would the differ- 
ent species inhabiting the same country which could best 
maintain the struggle against other species. The improve- 
ment in the structure of the animals takes place, under this 
process of natural selection, in the following manner : The 
best individuals being preserved, the organs of which they 
make most use in the struggle for existence undergo devel- 
opment and slight modifications, favorable to the preserva- 
tion of the individual, and these modifications are trans- 
mitted to their offspring. Here there comes in play a kind 
of collateral aid to which is given the name of " sexual 
selection," which is defined as a form of selection depend- 
ing *' not on a struggle for existence in relation to other 
organic beings or to external conditions, but on a struggle 
between individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the 
possession of the other sex."* "The result," continues 
Mr. Darwin, " is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, 

* " Origin of Species," p. 69. 



NATURAL AND SEXUAL SELECTION. 67 

but few or no offspring. Sexual selection is, therefore, less 
rigorous than natural selection. Generally, the most vigor- 
ous males, those which are best fitted for their place in 
nature, will leave most progeny. But, in many cases, vic- 
tory depends not so much on general vigor, as on having 
special weapons, confined to the male sex." As, by means 
of this warfare of sexual selection, the victor would always 
be allowed to breed, his courage and his special weapons of 
offense or defense, in their increased development, would 
descend to his offspring. Thus the improvement and 
modification induced by natural selection would be enhanced 
and transmitted by the sexual selection.* 

In regard to the operation of the two kinds of selection 
in the evolution of man from a lower form of animal, we 
find the theory to be this : That organic beings with 
peculiar habits and structure have passed through transi- 
tions which have converted the primordial animal into one 
of totally different habits and structure ; that, in these 
transitions, organs adapted to one condition and mode of 
life have become adapted to another ; that such organs are 
homologous, and that in their widely varied uses they have 
been formed by transitional gradations, so that, for ex- 
ample, a floating apparatus, or swim-bladder, existing in a 
water-animal for one purpose — flotation — has become con- 
verted in the vertebrate animals into true lungs for the 
very different purpose of respiration. Thus, by ordinary 
generation, from an ancient and unknown prototype, not 

* For the illustrations of both kinds of selection I must refer the reader 
to Mr. Darwin's works. In regard to birds, he makes the sexual selection 
operate less by the "law of battle " among the males, or by fighting, and 
more by the attractions of plumage and voice, by which the males carry on 
their rivalry for the choice of the females in pairing. But he attributes the 
same effect to the sexual selection in birds as in the other animals, namely, 
the transmission to offspring, and chiefly to the male offspring, of those 
peculiarities of structure which have given to the male parent the victory 
over his competitota. 



68 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

only have organs, by minute and successive transitions, be- 
come adapted to changed conditions of life, but the whole 
organism has become changed, and this has resulted in the 
production of an animal vastly superior to his ancient and 
unknown prototype ; and yet to that prototype, of which we 
have no specimen and no record, are to be traced the germs 
of all the peculiarities of structure which we find in the per- 
fect animals of different kinds that we thoroughly know, 
until we come to man, these successive results being brought 
about by the two kinds of selection — natural and sexual. 

There can be no better illustration of the character of 
Mr. Darwin's theory than that to which he resorts when 
he means to carry it to its most startling length, while he 
candidly admits that he has felt the difficulty of this appli- 
cation of it far too keenly to be surprised at the hesitation 
of others. This illustration is the eye. Here he very 
justly says it is indispensable that reason should conquer 
imagination ; but on which side of the question reason or 
imagination is most employed might, perhaps, be doubt- 
ful. Mr. Darwin's hypothesis concerning the eye begins 
with the fact that in the highest division of the animal 
kingdom, the vertebrata, we can start from an eye so sim- 
ple that it consists, as in the lancelet,* of a little sack of 
transparent skin, furnished with a nerve, and lined with 
pigment, but destitute of any other apparatus. From this 
prototype of a visual organ, up to the marvelous construc- 
tion of the eye of man or of the eagle, he supposes that ex- 
tremely slight and gradual modifications have led, by the 
operation of natural and sexual selection ; and by way of 
illustrating this development, he compares the formation 
of the eye to the formation of the telescope. **It is 
scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a tele- 

* A very low form of fish, without brain, vertebral column, or heart, 
classed by the older naturalists among the worms. (" Descent of Man," p. 
159.) The technical name of the lancelet is Amphioxm. 



THE EYE AND THE TELESCOPE. 69 

scope. We know that this instrument has been perfected 
by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intel- 
lects, and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed 
by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this infer- 
ence be presumptuous ? Have we any right to assume that 
the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man ? 
If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we 
ought, in imagination, to take a thick layer of transparent 
tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensi- 
tive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this 
la3^er to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to 
separate into layers of different densities and thickness, 
placed at different distances from each other, and with the 
surface of each layer slowly changing in form. Further, 
we must suppose that there is a power, represented by 
natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always 
watching each slight alteration in the transparent layers, 
and carefully preserving each which, under varied circum- 
stances, in any way or in any degree, tends to produce a 
distincter image. We miist suppose each new state of the 
instrument to be multiplied by the million, each to be pre- 
served until a better one is produced, and then the old ones 
to be all destroyed. In living bodies variations will cause 
the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost 
infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring 
skill each improvement. Let this process go on for mill- 
ions of years, and during each year on millions of individ- 
uals of many kinds, and may we not believe that a living op- 
tical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of 
glass as the works of the Creator are to those of man ? " * 

It might have occurred to the very learned naturalist 
that the formation of a mechanical instrument by the hand 
of man, guided by his intellect, admits of varieties of that 

* " Origin of Species," p. 146. 



70 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

instrument for different purposes, as products of an intelli- 
gent will. Different kinds of telescopes for different uses 
have been produced, not by destroying the poorer ones and 
preserving the better ones, but by a special and intentional 
adaptation of the structure to special uses, until an instru- 
ment is made which will dissolve the nebulas of- the milky 
way, and bring within the reach of our vision heavenly 
bodies of the existence of which we had no previous knowl- 
edge. Why may not the same intelligent and intentional 
formation of the human eye, as a special structure adapted 
to the special conditions of such an animal as man, have 
been the direct work of the Creator, just as the lowest 
visual organ — that of such a creature as the lancelet — was 
specially made for the conditions of its existence ? Why 
resort to the theory that all the intermediate varieties of 
the eye have grown successively out of the lowest form of 
such an organ by transitional grades of which we can not 
trace the series, when the probabilities concerning the 
varieties of this organ of which we have any knowledge are 
so strongly on the side of a special and intentional adapta- 
tion of each one to the circumstances of the animal to 
which it has been given ? As a question of power in the 
Creator, either method of action was of course just as com- 
petent as the other. As a question of which was his prob- 
able method, the case is very different ; for we know com- 
paratively very little of the modifications produced by such 
causes as natural or even sexual selection, while we may, 
without presumption, assume that we know much more 
about the purposes of special adaptation to special condi- 
tions, which an omnipotent Creator may have designed and 
effected. But this is a digression, and also an anticipation 
of the argument. 

To state the pedigree of man according to the Darwin- 
ian theory, we must begin with an aquatic animal as the 
early progenitor of all the vertebrata. This animal exist- 



I>ARWm'S PEDIGREE OF MAN. Tl 

ing, it is assumed, *'in the dim obscurity of the past," was 
provided with branchias or gills, or organs for respiration 
in water, with the two sexes united in the same individual, 
but with the most important organs of the body, such as 
the brain and heart, imperfectly or not at all developed. 
From this fish-like animal, or from some of its fish descend- 
ants, there was developed an amphibious creature, with the 
sexes distinct. Eising from the amphibians, through' a 
long line of diversified forms, we come to an ancient mar- 
supial animal, an order in which the young are born in a 
very incomplete state of development, and carried by the 
mother, while sucking, in a ventral pouch.* From the 
marsupials came the quadrumana f and all the higher mam- 
mals. I Among these mammals there was, it is supposed, 
a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, 
from which man is descended. It was an inhabitant of 
the Old World. It branched into the lemuridas, a group 
of four-handed animals, distinct from the monkeys, and 
resembling the insectivorous quadrupeds in some of their 
characters and habits ;^ and from these came the simiadse; 
of which there were two great stems — the New World and 
Old World monkeys. '' From the latter, at a remote 
period, man, the wonder and glory of the universe, pro- 
ceeded."! 

* The kangaroos and opossums are of this group. 
\ Animals with four hands. 

if Animals which produce living young, and nourish them after birth by 
milk from the teats of the mother. 

* The lemur is one of a genus of four-handed mammals, allied to the 
apes, baboons, and monkeys, but with a form approaching that of quadru- 
peds. 

I "Descent of Man," p. 165. — The reader will need to observe that 
monkey is the popular name of the ape and the baboon. In zoology, 
monkey designates the animals of the genus Simla, which have long tails. 
The three classes are apes, without tails ; monkeys, with long tails ; baboons, 
with short tails. 



72 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

The reader must now, in order to do justice to this the- 
ory, imagine a lapse of time, from the period of the exist- 
ence of the aquatic progenitor of all the vertebrata, to be 
counted by millions of years, or by any figures that will 
represent to the mind the most conceivable distance be- 
tween a past and a present epoch. Through this enormous 
stretch of centuries, in order to give scope to the operation 
of the laws of natural and sexual selection, we must sup- 
pose the struggle for existence to be going on among the 
individuals of the same species, and among different spe- 
cies inhabiting the same country, and the sexual selection 
among the individuals of the same species to be perpetually 
transmitting to offspring the improved and more developed 
organs and powers induced by natural selection ; so that in 
the countless sequence of generations there are evolved ani- 
mals that are so widely different from their remote pro- 
genitors that in classifying them we find them to be new 
species, endowed with a power of reproducing their own 
type, and similarly capable, it would seem, of still further 
'development into even higher types in the long-distant 
future. 

I know not how it may appear to others, but to me the 
parallelism between the Platonic and the Darwinian theory 
is very striking. Both speculators assume the existence of 
a Supreme Intelligence and Power, presiding over the 
creation of animals which are to inhabit this earth. Be- 
hind the celestial or primitive gods the Greek philosopher 
places the Demiurgus, to whom the gods stand in the re- 
lation of ministers or servants to execute his will. The 
modern naturalist assumes the existence of the Omnipo- 
tent God ; and although he does not directly personify the 
laws of natural and sexual selection which the Omnipotent 
power has made to operate in nature, they perform an office 
in the transitional gradations through which the animals are 
successively developed, that very closely resembles the office 



PLATO'S THEOKY. 73 

performed by the gods of Plato's system in providing the 
modifications of structure which the animals undergo. In 
the two processes the one is the reversed complement of 
the other. Plato begins with the formation of an animal of 
a very exalted type, and by successive degradations, induced 
by the failure of the animal to live up to the high standard 
of its rational existence, he supposes a descent into lower 
and still lower forms, the gods all the while providing a 
new structure for each successive lower form, until we 
reach the shell-fish fixed on the earth beneath the water. 
Darwin begins with the lowest form of animated organiza- 
tion, and by successive gradations induced by the struggle 
of the animal to maintain its existence, he supposes an as- 
cent into higher and still higher forms, the laws of natural 
and sexual selection operating to develop a new structure 
for each successive higher form, until we reach man, *' the 
wonder and glory of the universe," an animal whose imme- 
diate ancestor was the same as the monkey's, and whose re- 
mote progenitor was an aquatic creature breathing by gills 
and floating by a swim-bladder. 

Nor had Plato less of probability to support his theory 
than Darwin had to support his. The Greek philosopher 
might have adduced the constant spectacle of men debas- 
ing their habits and even their physical appearance into a 
resemblance to the brutes. He might have suggested, and 
he does suggest, how the degrading tendencies of the lower 
appetites and the ravages of disease drag down the human 
frame from its erect carriage and its commanding power 
over matter to an approximation with the condition of the 
inferior animals. He might have adduced innumerable 
proofs of the loss of reason, or rationality, through succes- 
sive generations of men, brought about by the transmission 
of both appetites and physical malformation from parents 
to children. He might have compared one of his Athenian 
fellow-citizens of the higher class with the lowest savage 



74 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

known throughout all the regions accessible to an observer 
of his day and country. He might have portrayed the one 
as a being preserving his physical organization in the high- 
est state of perfection by gymnastic exercises, by a well- 
chosen diet, by observance of all the conditions of health, 
by the aid of the highest medical skill known to the age ; 
cultivating his mind by philosophy, practicing every public 
and private virtue as they were understood among a people 
of rare refinement, and adorning his race by an exhibition 
of the highest qualities that were then attainable. All 
these qualities, physical, mental, and moral, Plato might 
have shown were transmissible in some degree, and in a 
good degree were actually transmitted from sire to son. 
Turning to the other picture, and comparing " Hyperion 
to the satyr," he might have shown that the lowest sav- 
age, in those physical points of structure which were best 
adapted to his animal preservation as an inhabitant of the 
wildest portion of the earth, had retained those which 
made him more nearly resemble the brute inhabitants of 
the same region, and that in his intellectual and moral 
qualities the resemblance between him and his Athenian 
contemporary was almost wholly lost. Intermediate be- 
tween these extreme specimens of the human race, why 
could not Plato have found with great probability, and 
often with actual proof, successive degradations of struct- 
ure and uses of organs, just as well supported by facts, or 
analogies, or hypotheses, as are Mr. Darwin's successive 
elevations from a lower to a higher animal ? If Plato had 
known as much about the animal kingdom as is now known, 
he could have arrayed the same facts in support of his the- 
ory, by an argument as powerful as that which now sup- 
ports the doctrine of evolution. 

Nay, it is certain that Plato's attention was drawn to 
some of these facts, and that he makes use of them in a 
way that is as legitimately a probable occurrence as any use 



EUDIMENTS. 75 

that is made of them at the present day. For example, he 
was struck with the existence of what in scientific parlance 
are called "rudiments," a term that is employed to describe 
an organ or part which appears to have no special use where 
it is found in one animal, but which, in a more developed 
or in a diversified condition, has an obvious use in another 
animal. Thus, he tells us that the gods, with a long- 
sighted providence, introduced a sketch or rudiment of 
nails into the earliest organization of man, foreseeing that 
the lower animals would be produced from the degeneration 
of man, and that to them claws and nails would be abso- 
lutely indispensable." * In the same way, he seems to re- 
gard hair as a rudiment, relatively speaking ; for while its 
use on different parts of the body of man, or even on the 
head, is not very apparent, its use to the lower animals is 
very obvious. Why, then> is it not just as rational, and 
just as much in accordance with proper scientific reasoning, 
to suppose those parts of animal structure which are called 
"rudiments" to have been introduced as mere sketches in 
the organization of a very high animal, and then to have 
been developed into special uses in lower animals produced 
by the degeneration of the higher, as it is to suppose that 
they were developed in full activity and use in the lower 
animals, but sank into the condition of useless or compara- 
tively useless appendages as the higher animal was evolved 
out of the lower by a process of elevation ? The modern 
naturalist of the evolution school will doubtless say that 
" rudiments " in the human structure, for which there is 
no assignable use that can be observed, are not to be ac- 
counted for as sketches from which Nature was to work, 
in finding for them a use in some other animal in a devel- 
oped and practically important condition ; that, to the ex- 
tent to which such things are found in man, they are proofs 

* Grote, iii, p. 276. 



76 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

of his cognate relations to tbe lower animals, in which they 
have a palpable use ; and that the gradations by which they 
have proceeded from practical and important uses in the 
lower animals, until they have become mere useless or com- 
paratively useless sketches in the human structure, are 
among the proofs of the descent of man from the lower ani- 
mals which had a use for such things. I shall endeavor 
hereafter to examine the argument that is derived from 
" rudiments " more closely. At present, the point which 
I suggest to the mind of the reader arises in the parallel 
between the Platonic and the Darwinian theory of the ori- 
gin of the different species of animals. I ask, why is it not 
just as probably a true hypothesis to suppose that man was 
first created with these rudimentary sketches in his organi- 
zation, and that they became useful appendages in the lower 
animals, into which man became degenerated, as it is to 
suppose that these parts existed in full development, ac- 
tivity, and practical use in the lower animals, out of whom 
man was generated, and that in man they lost their utility 
and became relatively mere rudiments ? To my mind, 
neither theory has the requisite amount of probability in 
its favor compared with the probability of special creations ; 
but I can see as much probability in the Platonic as in the 
Darwinian explanation, and a strong parallelism between 
them. 

I will pursue this parallel somewhat further by again 
adverting to Plato's idea of the origin of the human soul. 
He supposes it to have been an immortal being, formed out 
of the eternal essence of Ideas by the Demiurgus. He 
manifestly makes it an existence distinct from matter, be- 
cause he places its first abode in a heavenly mansion, where 
it is in unison with the celestial harmonies and perfections 
of the outer circle. This heavenly sphere is again to be its 
abode, after it shall have been released from its temporary 
abode on earth, which has been appointed to it for purposes 



PLATO'S ORIGIN OF THE SOUL. 77 

of discipline and trial. At a fixed time of birth it is brought 
down from its celestial abode and united with a mortal body, 
that it may assert and prove its power to preside over and 
govern that body according to the eternal laws of reason 
and rectitude. If it fulfills this high duty, when the fast- 
enings, which have bound it to the mortal frame, are dis- 
solved with the dissolution of those which hold together 
the material structure, the soul flies away with delight to 
its own peculiar star. If it fails in this high duty, it is on 
the death of the first body transferred by a second birth 
into a more degraded body, resembling that to which it has 
allowed the first one to be debased. At length, somewhere 
in the series of transmigrations, the lower and bestial tend- 
encies cease to have power over the immortal soul; the 
animal with which it was last united remains an animal 
bereft of reason, and the soul, released from further cap- 
tivity, escapes to its original abode in the heavens, more 
or less contaminated by what it has undergone, but stiU 
immortal, indestructible, spiritual, and capable of purifi- 
cation. 

Here, then, we have a conception of the origin and na- 
ture of the human soul as a spiritual existence, quite as dis- 
tinctly presented as it can be by human reason. Stripped 
of the machinery by which Plato supposes the soul to have 
come into existence, his conception of its origin and nature 
is the most remarkable contribution which philosophy, apart 
from the aid of what is called inspiration, has made to our 
means of speculating upon this great theme. Of course, it 
affords, with all the machinery of which Plato makes use, 
no explanation of the point or the time of junction between 
the soul and the body. But, as a conception of what in 
the poverty of language must be called the substance of the 
soul, of its spiritual and immortal nature, of its distinctive 
existence separate from what we know as matter, whether 
Plato borrowed more or less from other philosophers who 



78 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

preceded him, it is a yery distinct presentation of the nature 
of the human mind. 

Turn now to what can be extracted from the Darwinian 
theory of the origin and nature of the human mind, and 
observe where it holds with and where it breaks from the 
parallelism between it and the Platonic theory. The doc- 
trine of evolution, so called, presents to us no distinct sug- 
gestion that the mind of man is a separate and special crea- 
tion. Rejecting, and very properly rejecting, the Platonic 
idea of an existence of the human soul anterior to the birth 
of the individual, the Darwinian theory supposes that in 
the long course of time, during which natural and sexual 
selection were operating to produce higher and still higher 
animals, there came about, in the earlier and primitive or- 
ganizations, a habit of the animal to act in a certain way ; 
that this habit descended to offspring ; that it became de- 
veloped into what is now called instinct ; and that instinct 
became developed into what we now call mind. I know 
not how otherwise to interpret Mr. Darwin's repeated affir- 
mations that, in comparing the mental powers of man and 
those of the lower animals, there can be detected no differ- 
ence in kind, but that the difference is one of degree only ; 
that there is no fundamental difference, or difference in 
nature, between the mental powers of an ape and a man, or 
between the mental power of one of the lowest fishes, as a 
lamprey or lancelet, and that of one of the higher apes ; 
that both of these intervals, that between the ape and man, 
and that between the lancelet and the ape, which are much 
wider in the latter case than in the former, are filled up by 
numberless gradations,* If this be true, it must be be- 
cause the lancelet, supposing that animal to be the progeni- 
tor, formed a habit of acting by an implanted impulse, 
which became, under the operation of natural and sexual 

* " Descent of Man," p. 65. 



PARALLEL BETWEEN PLATO AND DARWIN. 79 

selection, confirmed, developed, and increased in its de- 
scendants, nntil it not only amounted to what is called in- 
stinct, but took on more complex habits until something 
akin to reason was developed. As the higher animals con- 
tinued to be evolved out of the lower, this approach to a 
reasoning power became in the ape a true mental faculty ; 
and, at length, in the numberless gradations of structure 
intermediate between the ape and the man, we reach those 
intellectual faculties which distinguish the latter by an 
enormous interval from all the other animals. " If," says 
Mr. Darwin, "no organic being, excepting man, had pos- 
sessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a 
wholly different nature from those of the lower animals, 
then we never should have been able to convince ourselves 
that our high faculties had been gradually developed. But 
it can be shown that there is no fundamental difference of 
this kind."* 

I will not here ask how far this is theoretical assump- 
tion. I shall endeavor to examine in another place the evi- 
dence which is supposed to show that the mental powers of 
man are in no respect fundamentally different, or different 
in kind, from the powers in the other animals to which the 
distinguished naturalist gives the name of *' mental" pow- 
ers. At present I am still concerned with the parallelism, 
between the Platonic and the Darwinian theory ; and I 
again ask whether the latter is not the former reversed, in 
respect to the process by which reason in the one case be- 
comes lost, and that by which in the other case it becomes 
developed out of something to which it bears no resem- 
blance ? Plato supposes the creation of pure reason, or 
mental power, in the shape — to use the counterpart of a 
physical term — of a non-physical, spiritual intelligence, or 
mind. It remains always of this nature, but the successive 

* " Descent of Man," p. 66. 



80 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

animals which it is required to inhabit on earth undergo 
snch degradations that the immortal reason loses in them 
the power to control their actions ; nothing is left to gov- 
ern in them but mere instinct, and this at last sinks into 
its lowest manifestations. Darwin, on the other hand, sup- 
poses the first creation to have been a yery low animal of a 
fish-like structure, with the lowest capacity for voluntary 
action of any kind, but impelled to act in a certain way by 
superimposed laws of self-preservation ; that in the infini- 
tude of successive generations these laws have operated to 
produce numberless gradations of structure, in the growth 
of which fixed habits have become complex instincts ; that 
further gradations have developed these instincts into 
something of mental power, as the successive higher ani- 
mals have become evolved out of the lower ones, until at 
length the intellect of man has been " gradually developed " 
by a purely physical process of the action of organized 
matter. 

This materialistic way of accounting for the origin of 
the human mind necessarily excludes the idea of its sepa- 
rate creation or its distinctive character. The theory is per- 
fectly consistent with itself, in supposing that the mind of 
man does not differ in kind, or differ fundamentally, from 
those exhibitions which in the lower animals lead us to at- 
tribute to them some mental power. But whether the the- 
ory is consistent with what we know of our own minds, as 
compared with what we can observe in the other animals, 
is the real question. In the first place, it is to be remem- 
bered that we can read our own minds, by the power of con- 
sciousness and reflection. In the next place, it is conceded 
that we can know nothing of the minds of the other ani- 
mals, excepting by their outward actions. They can not 
speak, to tell us of their emotions, their memories, their 
fears, their hopes, their desires, what they think, or whether 
they think at all. They do acts which wonderfully resem- 



DAKWIN'S OEIGIN OF HIND. 81 

ble the acts of man, in outward appearance, as if they were 
acts which proceeded from the same power of reason but in 
a less perfect degree ; yet they can tell us nothing of their 
mental processes, if they have such processes, and the ut- 
most that we can do is to argue from their acts that they 
have mental faculties akin to those of men. It is in the 
ordained nature of things that we know and can know, by 
introspection, what our own minds are. We can know the 
mind of no other animal excepting-from his outward acts. 
How far these will justify us in assuming that his mind is 
of the same nature as ours, or that ours is an advanced de- 
velopment of his, is the fundamental question. 

Plato was evidently led, by that study of the human 
mind which is open to all cultivated intellects through the 
process of consciousness and reflection, to conceive of the 
soul as a created intelligence of a spiritual nature. The 
fanciful materials out of which he supposes it to have been 
composed were the mere machinery employed to express 
his conception of its spiritual nature and its indestructible 
existence. He was led to employ such machinery by his 
highly speculative and constructive tendencies, and because 
it was the habit of Greek philosophy to account for every- 
thing. Some machinery he was irresistibly impelled to em- 
ploy, in order to give due consistency to his theory. But 
his machinery in no way obscures his conception of the na- 
ture of the soul, and we may disregard it altogether and 
still have left the conception of a spiritual and immortal 
being, formed for separate existence from matter, but united 
to matter for a temporary purpose of discipline and trial. 

The modern naturalist, on the other hand, although as- 
suming the existence of the Omnipotent God, supposes the 
human mind to have become what it is by the action of 
organized matter beginning at the lowest point of animal 
life, and going on through successive gradations of animal 
structure, until habits are formed which become instincts. 



82 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

and instincts are gradually deyeloped into mind. Take 
away the machinery that is employed, and you have left no 
conception of the immortal and indestructible nature of the 
human soul. The material out of which it is constructed 
is all of the earth earthy, and the twofold question arises : 
first, whether this was the probable method employed by the 
Omnipotent Creator ; and, secondly, whether it will account 
for such an existence as we have reason to believe the mind 
of man to be. 

There is another point in the parallel between the Pla- 
tonic and the Darwinian systems which is worthy of note. 
We have seen that, according to Plato, when the Demiurgus 
had completed the construction of the Kosmos and that of 
the human soul, he retired and left to the gods the construc- 
tion of a mortal body for man and of bodies of the inferior 
animals into which man would become degraded. Accord- 
ing to Darwin, the Omnipotent God constructs some very 
low form of animal, and then, retiring from the work of 
direct creation, he leaves the laws of natural and sexual 
selection to operate in the production of higher animals 
through the process that is called evolution. Perhaps it 
may be unscientific to ask why the Omnipotent God should 
cease to exercise, or refrain from exercising, his power of 
special creation, after he has once exerted it. Perhaps 
there is some view of the nature and purposes of that infi- 
nite being which would render such an abstention from 
his powers a probable occurrence. But it is difficult to 
conceive what this view can be. If we take a comprehen- 
sive survey of all the facts concerning the animal kingdom 
that are within the reach of our observation ; and if, then, 
in cases where we know of no intermediate or transitional 
states, we assume that they must have existed ; if we array 
the whole in support of a certain theory which undertakes to 
account both for what we see and for what we do not see, we 
very easily reach the conclusion that the Omnipotent God 



TRANSFOEMATION OF ORGANS. 83 

performed but one act of special creation, or at most per- 
formed but a very few of such acts, and those of the rudest 
and simplest tj^es, and then left all the subsequent and 
splendid exhibitions of animal structure to be worked out 
by natural selection. This is the scientific method adopted 
by the evolution school to account for the existence of all 
the higher animals of which we have knowledge, man in- 
cluded. It may be very startling, but we must acknowl- 
edge it as the -method of action of the Omnipotent God, be- 
cause it is said there is no logical impossibility in it. 

There is a passage in Mr. Darwin's " Origin of Species " 
which I must now quote, because it shows how strongly 
the supposed action and abstention of the infinite Creator, 
according to the Darwinian theory, resembles the action 
and abstention of Plato's Demiurgus : " Although the be- 
lief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been 
formed by natural selection, is enough to stagger any one ; 
yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of 
gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor ; then, 
under changing conditions of life, there is no logical im- 
possibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of 
perfection through natural selection. In the cases in which 
we know of no intermediate or transitional states, we 
should be extremely cautious in concluding that none can 
have existed, for the metamorphoses of many organs show 
what wonderful changes in function are at least possible. 
For instance, a swim-bladder has apparently been converted 
into an air-breathing lung. The same organ having per- 
formed simultaneously very different functions, and then 
having been in part or in whole specialized for one func- 
tion ; and two distinct organs having performed at the 
same time the same function, the one having been perfected 
while aided by the other, must often have largely facili- 
tated transitions." 

Here, then, we have it propounded that after the creation 



84 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

of the rudest and simplest form of a visual organ, the infi- 
nite God abstains from direct and special creation of such 
a perfect and elaborate organ as the human eye, and leayes 
it to be worked out by natural selection ; there being no 
logical impossibility, it is said, in this hypothesis. We are 
cautioned not to conclude, because we can not find the inter- 
mediate and transitional states of the visual organs, that they 
never existed ; we are told that they are at least possible, 
and that analogies show they must have existed ; and from 
the possibility of their existence and from the assumption 
that they happened, we are to believe that the Omnipotent 
God, refraining from the exercise of his power to create 
the human eye, with its wondrously perfect structure, left 
it to be evolved by natural selection out of the rudest and 
simplest visual organ which he directly fashioned. 

All things are possible to an infinite Creator. He who 
made the visual organ of the lowest aquatic creature that 
ever floated could make the human eye as we know it, or 
could make one that would do more than the eye of man 
ever was capable of. He could by a direct exercise of his 
power of creation form the eye of man, or he could leave 
it to be evolved out of the only type of a visual organ on 
which he saw fit to exercise his creative power. He could 
create in the land-animals a true air-breathing lung as a 
special production of his will, or could permit it to be 
formed by transitional gradations out of the swim-bladder 
of an aquatic creature. But why should he abstain from 
the one method and employ the other ? This question 
brings us at once to the probabilities of the case ; and, in 
estimating those probabilities, we must take into the ac- 
count all that reason permits us to believe of the attributes 
of the Almighty. We can not, it is true, penetrate into his 
counsels without the aid of revelation. But if we confine 
ourselves to the domain of science, or to the mere observa- 
tion of nature, we shall find reason for believing that the 



EEASONS FOR SPECIAL CREATIONS. 85 

Omnipotent God had purposes in his infinite wisdom that 
render the acts of special creation vastly more probable 
than the theory of evolution. A study of the animal king- 
dom and of all the phenomena of the universe leads us 
rationally and inevitably to one of two conclusions : either 
that there is no God, and that all things came by chance ; 
or to the belief that there is a God, and that he is a being 
of infinite benevolence as well as infinite wisdom and 
power. Now, why should such a being, proposing to him- 
self the existence on earth of such an animal as man, to be 
inhabited for a time by a soul destined to be immortal, 
abstain from the direct creation of both soul and body, and 
leave the latter to be evolved out of the lowest form of 
animal life, and the former to become a mere manifestation 
or exhibition.of phenomena, resulting from the improved 
and more elaborate structures of successive types of ani- 
mals ? Is there no conceivable reason why an infinitely 
wise, benevolent, and omnipotent being should have chosen 
to exercise the direct power of creation in forming the soul 
of man for an immortal existence, and also to exercise his 
direct power of creation in so fashioning the body as to fit 
it with the utmost exactness to be serviceable and subserv- 
ient to the mind which is to inhabit it for a season ? Why 
depict the infinite God as a quiescent and retired spectator 
of the operation of certain laws which he has imposed upon 
organized matter, when there are discoverable so many 
manifest reasons for the special creation of such a being as 
man ? It is hardly in accordance with any rational theory 
of God's providence, after we have attained a conception 
of such a being, to liken him intentionally or uninten- 
tionally to the Demiurgus of the acute and ingenious 
Greek philosopher. We must conclude that human society, 
with all that it has done or is capable of doing for man on 
earth, was in the contemplation of the Almighty ; and if 
we adopt this conclusion, we must account for the moral 



86 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

sense, for moral obligation, and for the idea of law and duty. 
We can not account for these things upon any probable 
theory of their origin, if we reject the idea that they were 
specially implanted in the structure of the human soul, and 
suppose that both the intellectual faculties and the moral 
sense were eyolyed out of the struggle of lower animals for 
their existence, resulting in the formation of higher animals 
and in the development of their social instincts into more 
complex, refined, and consciously calculating instincts of 
the same nature. 

I have not drawn this parallel between the Platonic and 
the Darwinian theories of the origin of different animals 
for any purpose of suggesting that the one was in any sense 
borrowed from the other. Plagiarism, in any form, is not, 
so far as I know, to be detected in the writings of the evo- 
lution school. But the speculations of Plato in regard to 
the origin and nature of the human soul, fanciful as they 
are, afford great assistance in grasping the conception of a 
spiritual existence ; and the parallel between his process of 
degradation and Darwin's process of elevation shows to my 
mind as great probability in the one theory as there is in 
the other. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Darwinian pedigree of man — The evolution of organisms out of other 
organisms, according to the theory of Darwin. 

It is doubtless an interesting speculation to go back in 
imagination to a period to be counted by any number of 
millions of years, or covered by an immeasurable lapse of 
time, and to conceive of slowly-moving causes by which the 
present or the past inhabitants of this globe became de- 
veloped out of some primordial type, through successive 
generations, resulting in different species, which became 
final products and distinct organisms. But what the im- 
agination can do in the formation of a theory when acting 
upon a certain range of facts is, as a matter of belief, to be 
tested by the inquiry whether the weight of evidence shows 
that theory to be, in a supreme degree, a probable truth, 
when compared with any other hypothesis. It is in this 
way that I propose to examine and test the Darwinian pedi- 
gree of man. The whole of Mr. Darwin's theory of the 
descent of man as an animal consists in assigning to him a 
certain pedigree, which traces his organism through a long 
series of other animals back to the lowest and crudest form 
of animal life ; and it must be remembered that this mode 
of accounting for the origin of man of necessity supposes 
an unbroken connection of lives with lives, back through 
the whole series of organisms which constitute the pedi- 
gree, and that, according to the Darwinian theory, there 
was no aboriginal creation of any of these organisms, save 
the very first and lowest form with which the series com- 



88 CEEATIOX OK EVOLUTION? 

mences. Not only must this connection of lives with lives 
be shown, but the theory must be able to show how it has 
come about that there are now distinct species of animals 
which never reproduce any type but their own. 

Two great agencies, according to the Darwinian theory, 
have operated to develop the different species of animals 
from some low primordial type, through a long series which 
has culminated in man, who can not lay claim to be a special 
creation, but must trace his pedigree to some ape-like creat- 
ure, and so on to the remote progenitor of all the Vertehrata. 
It is now needful to grasp, with as much precision as such 
a theory admits of, the nature and operation of these agen- 
cies, and to note the strength or weakness of the proof 
which they afford of the main hypothesis. First, we have 
what is called *'the struggle for existence," which may be 
conceded as a fact, and to which more or less may be at- 
tributed. The term is used by Mr. Darwin in a metaphori- 
cal sense, to include all that any being has to encounter in 
maintaining its individual existence, and in leaving prog- 
eny, or perpetuating its kind. In the animal kingdom, 
the struggle for individual existence is chiefly a struggle 
for food among the different individuals which depend on 
the same food, or against a dearth of one kind of food 
which compels a resort to some other kind. The struggle 
for a continuation of its species is dependent on the success 
with which the individual animal maintains the contest for 
its own existence. Now, it is argued that in this great and 
complex battle for life it would occur that infinitely varied 
diversities of structure would be useful to the animals in 
helping them to carry on the battle under clianging con- 
ditions. These useful diversities, consisting of the devel- 
opment of new organs and powers, would be preserved 
and perpetuated in the offspring, through many successive 
generations, while the variations that were injurious would 
be rigidly destroyed. The animals in whom these favor- 



BREEDING OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 89 

able individual differences and yariations of structure were 
preserved would have the best chance of surviving and of 
procreating their kind. So that, by this "survival of the 
fittest," Nature is continually selecting those variations of 
structure which are useful, and continually rejecting or 
eliminating those which are injurious ; the result being the 
gradual evolution of successive higher types of animals out 
of the lower ones, until we reach man, the highest animal 
organism that exists on this earth. In the next place, we 
have, as an auxiliary agency, in aid of natural selection, what 
is called *Hhe sexual selection," by which the best endowed 
and most powerful males of a given species appropriate the 
females, and thus the progeny become possessed of those 
variations of structure and the superior qualities which have 
given to the male parent the victory over his competitors. 

The proofs that are relied upon to establish the opera- 
tion and effect of these agencies in producing the results 
that are claimed for them, ought to show that, in one or 
more instances, an animal of a superior organization which, 
when left to the natural course of its reproduction by the 
union of its two sexes, always produces its own distinct 
type and no other, has, in fact, been itself evolved out of 
some lower and different organism by the agencies of natu- 
ral and sexual selection operating among the individuals of 
that lower type. One of the proofs, on which great stress 
is laid by Mr. Darwin, may be disposed of without diffi- 
culty. It is that which is said to take place in the breed- 
ing of domestic animals, or of animals the breeding of which 
man undertakes to improve for his own practical benefit, 
or to please his fancy, or to try experiments. In all that 
has been done in this kind of selection, in breeding from 
the best specimens of any class of animals, there is not one 
instance of the production of an animal varying from its 
near or its remote known progenitors in anything but ad- 
ventitious peculiarities which will not warrant us in regard- 



90 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

ing it as a new or different animal. No breeder of horses 
has ever produced an animal that was not a horse. He 
may have brought about great and important improvements 
in the qualities of fleetness, or strength, or weight, or en- 
durance, by careful selection of the sire and the dam ; but 
the race-horse or the hunter, or the draught-horse or the war- 
horse, is but a horse of different qualities and powers, with 
the same skeleton, viscera, organs, muscles, which mark 
this species of animal, and with no other variations of 
structure than such as follow from the limited development 
of different parts for different uses. No breeder of cows 
ever produced a female animal that was not a cow, although 
he may have greatly improved the quality and quantity of 
the milk peculiar to this animal by careful selection of the 
individuals which he permits or encourages to breed. No 
breeder of sheep ever produced an animal that was not a 
sheep, although the quality of the fleece or of the mutton 
may have been greatly improved or varied. Among the 
domestic fowls, no animal that was not a bird was ever bred 
by any crossing of breeds, although great varieties of plum- 
age, structure of beak, formation of foot, development of 
wing, habits of life, adaptation to changes of situation, and 
many minor peculiarities, have been the consequences of 
careful and intelligent breeding from different varieties of 
the same fowl. In the case of the pigeon, of which Mr. 
Darwin has given a great many curious facts from his own 
experience as a breeder, the most remarkable variations are 
perhaps to be observed as the results of intentional breed- 
ing from different races of that bird ; but with all these 
variations nothing that was not a bird was ever produced. 
In the case of the dog, whatever was his origin, or suppos- 
ing him to have been derived from the wolf, or to belong 
to the same family as the wolf, it is, of course, impossible 
to produce, by any crossing of different breeds of dogs, an 
animal that would not belong to the class of the CanidcR, 



LIMITATIONS TO SELECTION. 91 

Indeed, it is conceded by Darwin, with all the array of 
facts which he adduces in regard to the domesticated ani- 
mals, that by crossing we can only get forms in some de- 
gree intermediate between the parents ; and that although 
a race may be modified by occasional crosses, if aided by 
careful selection of the indiyiduals which present the de- 
sired character, yet to obtain a race intermediate between 
two distinct races would be yery difficult, if not impossible. 
If this is so, how much more remote must be the possibili- 
ty, by any selection, or by any crossing to which Nature 
will allow the diiferent animals to submit, to produce an 
animal of so distinct a type that it would amount to a differ- 
ent species from its known progenitors ! 

From all that has been brought about in the efforts of 
man to improye or to yary the breeds of domestic animals — 
a kind of selection that is supposed to be analogous to what 
takes place in Nature, although under different conditions 
— it is apparent that there are limitations to the power of 
selection in regard to the effects that are to be attributed to 
it. A line must be drawn somewhere. It will not do in 
scientific reasoning, or in any other reasoning, to ignore 
the limitations to which all experience and obseryation 
point with unerring certainty, so far as experience and ob- 
seryation furnish us with facts. It is true that the lapse 
of time during which there has been, with more or less 
success, an intentional improyement in the breeds of do- 
mestic animals carried on with recorded results has been 
very short when compared with the enormous period that 
has elapsed since the first creation of an animal organiza- 
tion, wheneyer or whatever that creation was. But history 
furnishes us with a pretty long stretch of time through 
which civilized, half-civilized, and savage nations have had 
to do with various animals in first taming them from a wild 
state and then in domesticating so as to make them sub- 
servient to human wants, and finally in improving their 



92 CREATION OE EVOLUTION? 

breeds. But there is no recorded or known instance in 
whicli there has been produced under domestication an ani- 
mal which can be said to be of a different species from its 
immediate known progenitors, or one that differed from its 
remote known progenitors in any but minor and adventi- 
tious peculiarities of structure. If in passing from what 
has been done by human selection in the breeding of ani- 
mals to what has taken place in Nature in a much longer 
space of time and on a far greater scale, we find that in 
Nature, too, there are limitations to the power of that 
agency which is called natural selection — that there is an 
impassable barrier which Nature never crosses, an invin- 
cible division between the different species of animals — 
we must conclude that there is a line between what se- 
lection can and what it can not do. We must conclude, 
with all the scope and power that can be given to natu- 
ral selection, that Nature has not developed a higher and 
differently organized animal out of a lower and inferior 
type — has not made new species by the process called 
evolution, because the infinite God has not commissioned 
Nature to do that thing, but has reserved it unto him- 
self to make special creations. Do not all that we know 
of the animal kingdom — all that naturalists have accu- 
mulated of facts and all that they concede to be the ab- 
sence of facts — show that there is a clear and well-defined 
limitation to the power of natural selection, as well as to 
the power of that other agency which is called sexual selec- 
tion ? Grant that this agency of natural selection began to 
operate at a period, the commencement of which is as re- 
mote as figures can describe ; that the struggle for life be- 
gan as soon as there was an organized being existing in 
numbers sufficiently large to be out of proportion to the 
supply of food ; that the sexual selection began at the same 
time, and that both together have been operating ever since 
among the different species of animals that have success- 



DAKWIN'S PEDIGKEE OF MAN. 93 

ively arisen and successively displaced each other through- 
out the earth. The longer we imagine this period to have 
been, the stronger is the argument against the theory of 
evolution, because the more numerous will be the absences 
of the gradations and transitions necessary to prove an un- 
broken descent from the remote prototype which is assumed 
to have been the first progenitor of the whole animal king- 
dom. Upon the hypothesis that evolution is a true account 
of the origin of the different animals, we ought practically 
to find no missing links in the chain. The fact is that the 
missing links are both extremely numerous and important ; 
and the longer the period assumed — the further we get from 
the probability that these two agencies of natural and sexual 
selection were capable of producing the results that are 
claimed for them — the stronger is the proof that a barrier 
has been set to their operation, and the more necessary is 
it to recognize the line which separates what they can from 
what they can not do. 

Let us now see what is the state of the proof. It may 
assist the reader to understand the Darwinian pedigree of 
man if I present it in a tabulated form, such as we are accus- 
tomed to use in exhibiting to the eye the pedigree of a single 
animal. Stated in this manner, the Darwinian pedigree of 
man may be traced as follows : 

I. A marine animal of the maggot form. 

II. Group of lowly-organized fishes. 

ni. Ganoids and other fishes. 

lY. The Amphibians. 

V. The ancient Marsupials. 

VI. The Quadrumana and all the higher mammals. 

VII. The Lemuridae. 

VIII. The Simiadse. 

I 



IX. Old World Monkeys. New World Monkeys. 
X. Man. 



94: CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

These ten classes or groups of animals are supposed to 
be connected together bj intermediate diversified forms, 
which constitute the transitions from one of the classes or 
groups to the other ; and in reading the table downward it 
must be remembered that we are reading in fact through 
an ascending scale of beings, from the very lowest organized 
creature to the highest. The whole, taken together, forms 
a chain of evidence ; and, according to the rational rules of 
evidence, each distinct fact ought to be proved to have ex- 
isted at some time before our belief in the main hypothesis 
can be challenged. I know of no reason why the probable 
truth of a scientific hypothesis should be judged by any 
other rules of determination than those which are applied 
to any other subject of inquiry ; and, while I am ready to 
concede that in matters of physical science it is allowable 
to employ analogy in constructing a theory, it nevertheless 
remains, and must remain, true that where there are nu- 
merous links in a supposed chain of proofs that are estab- 
lished by nothing but an inference drawn from an analo- 
gous fact, the collection of supposed proofs does not ex- 
clude the probable truth of every other hypothesis but that 
which is sought to be established, as it also does not estab- 
lish the theory in favor of which the supposed facts are 
adduced. Upon these principles of evidence I propose now 
to examine the Darwinian pedigree of man. 

I. The group of marine animals described as resembling 
the larvae of existing Ascidians ; that is to say, an aquatic 
animal in the form of a grub, caterpillar, or worm, which is 
the first condition of an insect at its issuing from the egg. 
These assumed progenitors of the Vertebrata are reached, 
according to Mr. Darwin, by '^an obscure glance into a 
remote antiquity," and they are described as "apparently" 
existing, and as "resembling" the larvae of existing Ascidi- 
ans. "We are told that these animals were provided with 
branchiae, or gills, for respiration in water, but with the 



DAEWIN'S PEDIGREE OF MAK 95 

most important organs of the body, sucli as the brain and 
heart, imperfectly or not at all developed. This simple 
and crude animal "we can see," it is said, "in the dim 
obscurity of the past," and that it "must have been the 
early progenitor of all the Vertebrata. " * It is manifest 
that this creature is a mere hypothesis, constructed, no 
doubt, by the aid of analogy, but existing only in the eye 
of scientific imagination. Why is it placed in the water ? 
For no reason, apparently, but that its supposed construc- 
tion is made to resemble that of some creatures which have 
been found in the water, and because it was necessary to 
make it the progenitor of the next group, the lowly-organ- 
ized fishes, in order to carry out the theory of the subse- 
quent derivations. It might have existed on the land, un- 
less at the period of its assumed existence the whole globe 
was covered with water. If it had existed on the land, the 
four subsequent forms, up to and including the Marsupials, 
might have been varied to suit the exigencies of the pedi- 
gree without tracing the descent of the Marsupials through 
fishes and the Amphibians. 

II. The group of lowly-organized fishes. These are 
said to have been "probably" derived from the aquatic 
worm (I), and they are described to have been as lowly 
organized as the lancelet, which is a known fish of negative 
characters, without brain, vertebral column, or heart, pre- 
senting some affinities with the Ascidians, which are in- 
vertebrate, hermaphrodite marine creatures, permanently 
attached to a support, and consisting of a simple, tough, 
leathery sack, with two small projecting orifices. The 
larvas of these creatures somewhat resemble tadpoles, and 
have the power of swimming freely about. These larvae of 
the Ascidians are said to be, in their manner of develop- 
ment, related to the Vertebrata in the relative position of 

* " Descent of Man," pp. 164, 609. 



96 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

the nervous system, and in possessing a structure closely 
like the chorda dorsalis of vertebrate animals.* Here, 
again, it is apparent that a group of lowly-organized fish- 
like animals, of which there are no remains, have been con- 
structed by a process of scientific reasoning from a certain 
class of marine creatures that are known. As a matter of 
pure theory, there can be no serious objection to this kind 
of construction, especially if it is supported by strong prob- 
abilities furnished by known facts. But when a theory re- 
quires this kind of reasoning in order to establish an im- 
portant link in a chain of proofs, it is perfectly legitimate 
and necessary criticism that we are called upon to assume the 
former existence of such a link ; and, indeed, the theorists 
themselves, with true candor and accuracy, tell us that they 
are arguing upon probabilities from the known to the un- 
known, or that a thing "must have existed" because analo- 
gies warrant the assumption that it did exist. In a matter 
so interesting, and in many senses important, as the evolu- 
tion theory of man's descent, it is certainly none too rigid to 
insist on the application of the ordinary rules of belief. 

III. The Ganoids and other fishes like the Lepidosiren. 
These, we are told, "must have been developed" from the 
preceding (II). The Ganoids, it is said, were fishes cov- 
ered with peculiar enameled bony scales. Most of them 
are said to be extinct, but enough is known about them to 
lay the foundation for their "probable" development from 
the first fishes that are supposed to have been derived from 
the aquatic worm (I). There is a reason for arguing the 
existence of these first fishes as a true fish with the power 
of locomotion, because the next ascending group of animals 
is to be the Amphibians. In a fish, the swim-bladder is an 
important organ ; and it is an organ that plays an impor- 
tant part in the Darwinian theory, furnishing, it is claimed, 

*" Descent of Man," p. 159. 



HOMOLOGOUS ORGANS. 97 

a very remarkable illustration that an organ constructed 
originally for one purpose, flotation, may be converted into 
one for a widely different purpose, namely, respiration. As 
the Amphibians, which as a distinct group were to come 
next after the fishes in the order of development, must be 
furnished with a true air-breathing lung, their progenitors, 
which inhabited the water only, must be provided with an 
organ that would undergo, by transitional gradations, con- 
version into a lung. But what is to be chiefly noted here 
is that it is admitted that the prototype, which was fur- 
nished with a swim-bladder, was ^'an ancient and unknown 
prototype " ; and it is a mere inference that the true lungs 
of vertebrate animals are the swim-bladder of a fish so con- 
verted, by ordinary generation, from the unknown proto- 
type because the swim-bladder is *' homologous or 'ideally 
similar ' in position and structure with the lungs of the 
higher vertebrate animals." * One might ask here without 
presumption, why the Omnipotent God should not have 
created in the vertebrate animals a lung for respiration, as 
well as have created or permitted the formation of a swim- 
bladder in a fish ; and looking to the probabilities of the 
case, it is altogether too strong for the learned naturalist to 
assert that "there is no reason to doubt that the swim- 
bladder has actually been converted into lungs or an organ 
used exclusively for respiration " ; especially as we are fur- 
nished with nothing but speculation to show the inter- 
mediate and transitionary modifications between the swim- 
bladder and the lung. While we may not assume 'Hhat 
the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man," 
in all respects, it is surely not presumptuous to suppose that 
an Omnipotent and All-wise Being works by powers that 
are competent to produce anything that in his infinite pur- 
poses he may see fit specially to create. 

* " Origin of Species," p. 148. 



98 CKEATIOIT OR EVOLUTION? 

IV. The Amphibians. Here we come to what is now 
a very numerous group, of which it is said that the first 
specimens received, among other modifications, the trans- 
formation of the swim-bladder of their fish progenitors into 
an air-breathing lung. We are told that from the fishes of 
the last preceding group (III) " a very small advance would 
carry us on to the Amphibians." * But whether the ad- 
vance from an animal living in the water and incapable of 
existing out of that element, to an animal capable of living 
on the land as well as in the water, was small or large, we 
look in vain, at present, for the facts that constitute that 
advance. 

V. The Ancient Marsupials. These were an order of 
mammals such as the existing kangaroos, opossums, etc., 
of which the young, born in a very incomplete state of de- 
velopment, are carried by the mother, while sucking, in a 
ventral pouch. They are supposed to have been the jDrede- 
cessors, at an earlier geological j)eriod, of the placental 
mammals, namely, the highest class of mammals, in which 
the embryo, after it has attained a certain stage, is united 
to the mother by a vascular connection called the placenta, 
which secures nourishment that enables the young to be 
born in a more complete state. There is a third and still 
lower division of the great mammalian series, called the 
Montremata, and said to be allied to the Marsupials. But 
the early progenitors of the existing Marsupials, classed as 
the Ancient Marsupials, are supposed to constitute the 
connection between the Amphibians and the placental 
mammals ; that is to say, an animal which produced its 
young by bringing forth an Qgg, from which the young 
is hatched, became converted into an animal which pro- 
duced its young from a womb and nourished it after birth 
from the milk supplied by its teats, the young being born 

*" Descent of Man," p. 165. 



DARWIN'S PEDIGREE OF MAN. 99 

in a very incomplete state of development and carried by 
the mother in a ventral pouch while it is sucking. The 
steps of variation and development by which this extraor- 
dinary change of structure, of modes of reproduction and 
formation of organs, as well as habits of life, took place, 
are certainly not yet discovered ; and it is admitted, in re- 
spect to forms '^now so utterly unlike," that the production 
of the higher forms by the process of evolution " implies the 
former existence of links binding closely together all these 
forms." * In other words, we are called upon to supply by 
general reasoning links of which we have as yet no proof. 

VI. The Quadrumana and all the higher (or Placental) 
Mammals. These are supposed to stand between the im- 
placental mammals (V) and the Lemuridae (VII). The 
latter were a group of four-handed animals, distinct from 
the monkeys, and "resembling the insectivorous quadru- 
peds." But the gradations which would show the trans- 
formation from the implacental Marsupials to the placental 
Quadrumana are wanting. 

VII. The Lemuridae. This branch of the placental 
mammals is now actually represented by only a few va- 
rieties. The early progenitors of those which still exist 
are placed by Darwin in the series intermediate between 
the Quadrumana and the Simiadae ; and according to Hux- 
ley they were derived from the lowest, smallest, and least 
intelligent of the placental mammalia. 

VIII. The Simiadae. This is the general term given 
by naturalists to the whole group of monkeys. From the 
Lemuridas to the Simiadae we are told by Darwin that " the 
interval is not very wide." Be it wider or narrower, it 
would be satisfactory to know whether the gradations by 
which the former became the latter are established by any- 
thing more than general speculation. 

* " Descent of Man/' p. 158. 



100 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

IX. The Catarrliiiie, or Old- World Monkeys. These 
are the great stem or branch of the Simiadae which became 
the progenitors of man. His immediate progenitors were 
"probably" a group of monkeys called by naturalists the 
Anthropomorphous Apes, being a group without tails or 
callosities, and in other respects resembling man. While 
this origin of man is gravely put forward and maintained 
with much ingenuity, we are told that *' we must not fall 
into the error of supposing that the early progenitor of the 
whole Simian stock, including man, was identical with, or 
even closely resembled, any existing ape or monkey." * So 
that somewhere between the early progenitor of the whole 
Simian stock and all that we know of the monkey tribe, 
there were transitions and gradations and modifications 
produced by natural and sexual selection which we must 
supply as well as we can. 

X. Man, We have now arrived at " the wonder and 
glory of the universe," and have traced his pedigree from a 
low form of animal, in the shape of an aquatic worm, 
through successive higher forms, each developed out of its 
predecessor by the operation of fixed laws, and without the 
intervention of any special act of creation anywhere in the 
series, whatever may have been the power and purjDose by 
and for which existence was given to the first organized 
and living creature,, the aquatic worm. Speaking of man 
as belonging, from a genealogical point of view, to the Ca- 
tarrhine, or Old- World stock of monkeys, Mr. Darwin ob- 
serves that "we must conclude, however much the con- 
clusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors 
would have been properly thus designated." f 

I have already said that our pride may be wholly laid 
out of consideration. The question of the probable truth 
of this hypothesis of man's descent should not be affected 

* " Descent of Man," p. 155. f I^id. 



PROBABILITY THE SOLE QUESTIOIT. 101 

bj anything but correct reasoning and the application of 
proper principles of belief. Treating it with absolute in- 
difference in regard to the dignity of our race, I shall re- 
quest my readers to examine the argument by which it is 
supported, without the smallest influence of prejudice. I 
am aware that it is asking a good deal to desire the reader 
to divest himself of all that nature and education and his- 
tory and poetry and religion have contributed to produce 
in our feelings respecting our rank in the scale of being. 
When I come to treat of that which, for want of a more 
suitable term, must be called the substance of the human 
mind, and to suggest how it bears upon this question of the 
origin of man, I shall, as I trust, give the true, and no 
more than the true, scope to those considerations which 
lead to the comparative dignity of the race. But this dig- 
nity, as I have before observed, should follow and should 
not precede or accompany the discussion of the scientific 
problem. 

What has chiefly struck me in studying the theory of 
evolution as an account of the origin of man is the extent 
to which the theory itself has influenced the array of proofs, 
the inconsequential character of the reasoning, and the 
amount of assumption which marks the whole argument. 
This is not said with any purpose of giving offense. What 
is meant by it will be fully explained and justified, and one 
of the chief means for its justification will be found in what 
I have here more than once adverted to — Mr. Darwin's 
own candor and accuracy in pointing out the particulars in 
which important proofs are wanting. Another thing by 
which I have been much impressed has been the repetition 
of what is "probable," without a sufficient weighing of the 
opposite probability ; and sometimes this reliance on the 
" probable " has been carried to the verge, and even beyond 
the verge, of all probability. Doubtless the whole question 
of special creations on the one hand and of gradual evo- 



102 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

lution on the other is a question of probability. But I 
now refer to a habit among naturalists of asserting the 
probability of a fact or an occurrence, and then, without 
proof, placing that fact or occurrence in a chain of eyidence 
from which the truth of their main hypothesis is to be in- 
ferred. It is creditable to them as witnesses, that they tell 
us that the particular fact or occurrence is only probably 
true, and that we are to look for proof of it hereafter. But 
the whole theory thus becomes an expectant one. We are 
to give up our belief that God made man in his own image 
— that he fashioned our minds and bodies after an image 
which he had conceived in his infinite wisdom — because we 
are to expect at some future time to discover the proof that 
he did something very different ; that he formed some very 
lowly-organized creature, and then sat as a retired spectator 
of the struggle for existence, through which another and 
then another higher form of being would be evolved, until 
the mind and the body of man would both have grown out 
of the successive developments of organic structure. We 
can not see this now ; we can not prove it ; but we may 
expect to be able to see it and to prove it hereafter. 

The present state of the argument does not fur- 
nish very strong grounds for the expectation of what the 
future is to show. As far as I can discover, the. main 
ground on which the principle of evolution is accepted by 
those who believe in it, is general reasoning. It is ad- 
mitted that there are breaks in the organic chain between 
man and his nearest supposed allies which can not be bridged 
over by any extinct or living species. The answer that is 
made to this objection seems to me a very singular speci- 
men of reasoning. It is said that the objection will not 
appear of much weight to those who believe in the prin- 
ciple of evolution from general reasons. But how is it with 
those who are inquiring, and who, failing to feel the force 
of the '^ general reasons," seek to know what the facts are ? 



WHAT THE FUTURE IS TO SHOW. 103 

When we are told that the breaks in the organic chain 
"depend merely on the number of related forms which 
have become extinct/' is it asking too much to inquire how 
it is known that there were such forms and that they have 
become extinct ? Geology, it is fully conceded on its high- 
est authorities, affords us very little aid in arriving at these 
extinct forms which would connect man with his ape-like 
progenitors ; for, according to Lyell, the discovery of fossil 
remains of all the vertebrate classes has been a very slow 
and fortuitous process, and this process has as yet reached 
no remains connecting man with some extinct ape-like 
creature.* The regions where such remains would be most 
likely to be found have not yet been searched by geolo- 
gists. This shows the expectant character of the theory, 
and how much remains for the future in supplying the 
facts which are to take the place of "general reasons." 

But perhaps the most remarkable part of the argument 
remains to be stated. The breaks in the organic chain of 
man's supposed descent are admitted to be of frequent oc- 
currence in all parts of the series, "some being wide, sharp, 
and defined, others less so in various degrees." f But these 
breaks depend merely, it is said, upon the number of related 
forms that have become extinct, there being as yet no proof, 
even by fossil remains, that they once existed. Now, the 
prediction is that at some future time such breaks will be 
found still more numerous and wider, by a process of ex- 
I tinction that will be observed and recorded ; and hence we 
are not to be disturbed, in looking back into the past, by 
finding breaks that can not be filled by anything but gen- 
eral reasoning. The passage in which this singular kind 
of reasoning is expressed by Mr. Darwin deserves to be 
quoted : 

"At some future period, not very distant as measured 

* "Descent of Man," pp. 156, U1. t I^id., p. 156. 



104 CREATION OR EVOLUTIOIT? 

by centuries, tlie civilized races of man will almost cer- 
tainly exterminate and replace the savage races througliout 
tlie world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, 
as Prof. Schaafhausen has remarked, will no doubt be 
exterminated. The break between man and his nearest 
allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man 
in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the 
Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of 
as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."* 
I do not quite comprehend how the '^more civilized 
state of man " in the more or less remote future is to lead 
to this wider break. One can understand how the whole of 
mankind may become more civilized, and how the savage 
races will disappear by extermination or otherwise. It may 
be, and probably will be, that the anthropomorphous apes 
will be exterminated at the same time. But the question 
here is not in regard to a more perfect and widely diffused 
civilization — a higher and universal elevation of the intel- 
lectual and moral condition of mankind, a more improved 
physical and moral well-being — ^bat it is in regard to a 
change in the physical and organic structure of the human 
animal, so marked and pronounced as to produce a wider 
break between man and his nearest supposed allies than that 
which now exists between the negro or the Australian and 
the gorilla. The anthropomorphous ape existing now will 
have disappeared ; but it will be a well-known and recorded 
animal of the past. But what reason is there to expect that 
natural and sexual selection, or the advance of civilization, 
or the extermination of the savage races of mankind, or all 
such causes combined, are going to change essentially the 
structure of the human body to something superior to or 
fundamentally different from the Caucasian individual ? 
We have had a tolerably long recorded history of the human 

* " Descent of Man," p. 156. 



HISTORIC AND PRE-HISTORIO MAN. 105 

body as it has existed in all states of civilization or barba- 
rism. And although in the progress from barbarism to civil- 
ization — if utter barbarism preceded civilization — the devel- 
opment of its parts has been varied, and the brain especially 
has undergone a large increase in volume and in the activity 
of its functions, we do not find that the plan on which the 
human animal was constructed, however we may suppose 
him to have originated, has undergone any material change. 
The most splendid specimen of the Caucasian race that 
the civilized world can show to-day has no more organs, 
bones, muscles, arteries, veins, or nerves than those which 
■ are found in the lowest savage. He makes a different use 
of them, and that use has changed their development, and 
to some extent has modified stature, physical, intellectual, 
and moral, and many other attributes ; as climate and 
habits of life have modified complexion, the diseases to 
which the human frame is liable, and many other peculiari- 
ties. But if we take historic man, we find that in all the 
physical features of his animal construction that constitute 
him a species, he has been essentially the same animal in all 
states of civilization or barbarism ; and unless we boldly 
assume that the prehistoric man was an animal born with a 
coat of hair all over his body, and that clothing was re- 
sorted to as the hair in successive generations disappeared, 
we can have no very strong reason for believing that the 
human body has been at any time an essentially different 
structure from what it is now. Even in regard to longevi- 
ty or power of continued life, if we set aside the exceptional 
cases of what is related of the patriarchs in the biblical 
records, we do not find that the average duration of hu- 
man life has been much greater or much less than the 
threescore and ten or the fourscore years that are said to 
have been the divinely appointed term. As to what may 
have been the average duration of life among prehistoric 
men, we are altogether in the dark. 



106 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

I must now revert to one of the most prominent of the 
admitted breaks in the Darwinian pedigree, namely, that 
which occurs at the supposed transition from the amphibi- 
ans to the mammalia. There is a term which is used in 
mechanics to mark the characteristic and fundamental dis- 
tinction between one complex machine and another. We 
speak of the ^^ principle" on which a mechanical structure 
operates, meaning the essential construction and mode of 
operation which distinguish it from other machines of the 
same general class. Although we are not to forget that 
an animal organization, to which is given that mysterious 
essence that is called life, may come into being by very 
different processes from those which are employed by man 
in dealing with dead matter and the forces which reside in 
it, yet there is no danger of being misled into false analo- 
gies, if we borrow from mechanics a convenient term, and 
speak of the "principle " on which an animal is constructed 
and on which its animal organization operates. We find, 
then, that in the animal kingdom there is a perfectly clear 
and pronounced division between the modes in which the 
reproductive system is constructed and by which it oper- 
ates in the continuation of the species. The principle of 
construction and operation of the reproductive system, 
by which an individual animal is produced from an egg 
brought forth by the female parent, and is thereafter nour- 
ished without anything derived from the parental body, is 
as widely different from that by which the young animal 
is born from a womb and nourished for a time from the 
milk of the mother, as any two constructions, animate or 
inanimate, that can be conceived of. Whatever may be the 
analogy or resemblance between the embryo that is in the 
egg of one animal and the embryo that remains in the womb 
of another animal, at the point at which the egg is expelled 
from the parental system the analogy or resemblance ceases. 
In certain animals a body that is called an egg is formed 



miRODUCTION OF THE PLACENTA. 107 

in the female parent, containing an embryo, or foetus, of 
the same species, or the substance from which a like animal 
is produced. This substance is inclosed in an air-tight yes- 
sel or shell ; when this has been expelled from the parent 
the growth of the embryo goes on to the stage of develop- 
ment at which the young animal is to emerge from the in- 
closure, and, whatever may have been the process or means 
of nourishment surrounding the embryo within the shell 
and brought in that inclosure from the body of the parent, 
the young animal never derives, at any subsequent stage of 
its existence, either before or after it has left the shell, any- 
thing more from the parental system. It may be ' * hatched " 
by parental incubation or by heat from another source, but 
for nourishment, after it leaves the shell, the young animal 
is dependent on substances that are not supplied from the 
parental body, although they may be gathered or put within 
its reach by the parental care. 

The transition from this system of reproduction to that 
by which the foetus is formed into a greater or less degree 
of development within the body of the parent, and then 
brought forth to be nourished into further development by 
the parental milk, is enormous. The principle of the or- 
ganic construction and mode of perpetuating the species, 
in the two cases, is absolutely unlike after we pass the point 
at which the ovule is formed by the union of the male and 
the female vesicles that are supposed to constitute its sub- 
stance. When we pass from the implacental to the pla- 
cental mammals we arrive at the crowning distinction be- 
tween the two great systems of reproduction which separates 
them by a line that seems to forbid the idea that the one 
has grown out of the otlier by such causes as natural selec- 
tion, and without a special and intentional creation of a 
new and different mode of operation. On the one hand, 
we have a system of reproduction by which the ovule is 
brought forth from the body of the parent in an inclosed 



108 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

vessel, and thereafter derives nothing from the parental 
body. In the other, we have the ovule developed into the 
foetus within the body of the parent, and the young animal 
is then brought forth in a more or less complete state of 
development, to be nourished by the parental secretion 
called milk. The intervention of the placental connection 
between the foetus and the mother, whereby nourishment 
is kept up so that the young animal may be born in a more 
complete state of development, is a contrivance of marvel- 
ous skill, which natural selection, or anything that can be 
supposed to take place in the struggle for existence, or the 
result of the sexual battle, seems to be entirely inadequate 
to account for. If two such very diverse systems could be 
supposed to have been the product of human contrivance, 
we should not hesitate to say that the principle of the one 
was entirely different from that of the other, and that the 
change evinced the highest constructive skill and a special 
design. 

The Darwinian hypothesis is that this great transition 
from the one system of reproduction to the other took place 
between the amphibians and the ancient marsupials, by 
the operation of the influences of natural and sexual selec- 
tion. That is to say, the system of reproduction through 
an egg, which is the characteristic of the amphibians, 
became changed by gradations and modifications into the 
system of the lowest mammals, the distinction between 
the former and the latter being an obvious and palpable 
one. Then we are to suppose a further change from 
the marsupials, or the implacental mammals, to that won- 
derful contrivance, the placenta, by which the mother 
nourishes the foetus into a more complete state of develop- 
ment before the young animal is born. This enormous 
change of system is supposed to have been brought about 
by a struggle among the individuals of one species for food, 
aided by a struggle between the males of that species for 



COMPAEISON OF MAN WITH OTHER MAMMALS. 109 

the possession of the females, by the growth and deyelop- 
ment of organs useful to the animal in the two battles, and 
by the transmission of these enhanced powers and improved 
weapons to offspring, and possibly by the crossing of differ- 
ent varieties of the new animals thus produced. But what 
potency there could be in such causes to bring about this 
great change it is extremely difficult to imagine, and we 
must draw largely on our imaginations to reach it. It 
would seem that if there is any one part of animal economy 
that is beyond the influence of such causes as the "survival 
of the fittest," it is the reproductive system, by which the 
great, divisions of the animal kingdom continue their re- 
spective forms. Grive all the play that you can to the opera- 
tion of the successful battle for individual life, and to the 
victory of the best-appointed males over their competitors 
for the possession of the females, and to the transmission 
of acquired peculiarities to offspring — when you come to 
such a change as that between the two systems of repro- 
duction and perpetuation, you have to account for some- 
thing which needs far more proof of the transitional grada- 
tions of structure and habits of life than can now be found 
between the highest of the amphibians and the lowest of 
the mammalia. I know not how there could be higher or 
stronger evidence of design, of a specially planned and in- 
tentionally elaborated construction, than is afforded by this 
great interval between the one reproductive system and the 
other. But it is time now to pass to those points of re- 
semblance between man and the other mammals which are 
asserted as the decisive proofs of his and their descent from 
some pre-existing form, their common progenitor. These 
points of resemblance may be considered in the following 
order : 

1. The Bodily Structure of Man. — He is notoriously 
constructed on the same general type or model as other 
mammals. "All the bones in his skeleton can be com- 



L 



110 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

pared witli corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. 
So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and internal 
viscera. The brain, the most important of all the organs, 
follows the same law." * 

2. The Lialility of Man to certain Diseases to which 
the Lower Animals are UaUe. — These diseases, such as hy- 
drophobia, variola, the glanders, syphilis, cholera, etc., man 
both communicates to and receives from some of the lower 
animals. '^This fact proves the close similarity of their 
tissues and blood, both in minute structure and composi- 
tion, far more plainly than does their comparison under 
the best microscope or by the aid of the best chemical analy- 
sis." Monkeys are liable to many of the same non-conta- 
gious diseases as we are, such as catarrh and consumption. 
They suffer from apoplexy, inflammation of the bowels, and 
cataract in the eye. Their young die from fever when shed- 
ding their milk-teeth. Medicines produce the same effect 
on them as on us, and they have a strong taste for tea, cof- 
fee, spirituous liquors, and even tobacco. Man is infested 
with both internal and external parasites of the same genera 
or families as those infesting other mammals ; in the case of 
scabies, he is infested with the same species of parasites. 
He is subject to the same law of lunar periods, in the 
process of gestation, and in the maturation and duration 
of certain diseases. His wounds are repaired by the same 
process of healing, and, after the amputation of his limbs, 
the stumps occasionally possess some power of regenera- 
tion, as in the lowest animals, f 

3. The Reproductive Process. — This is strikingly the 
same, it is said, in all mammals, from the first act of court- 
ship by the male to the birth and nurturing of the young. J 
The closeness of the parallel here, however, is obviously 
between man and the other placental mammalia, if we re- 

* " Descent of Man," p. 6. f Ibid., p. 8. % Ibid. 



COMPARISON" OF MAN WITH OTHER MAMMALS. HI 

gard the whole process of reproduction of the different 
species. 

4. Embryonic Development. — From the human ovule, 
which is said to differ in no respect from the ovule of other 
animals, into and through the early embryonic period, we 
are told that the embryo of man can hardly be distia- 
guished from that of other members of the vertebrate king- 
dom. It is not necessary to repeat the details of the resem- 
blance, which are undoubtedly striking, because they show 
a remarkable similarity between the embryo of man and 
that of the dog and the ape, in the earlier stage of the 
development, and that it is not until quite in the later 
stages of development that the three depart from each 
other, the difference between the young human being and 
the ape being not so great as that between the ape and the 
dog. We may, of course, accept Prof. Huxley's testimony 
that ^^the mode of origin [conception?] and the early 
stages of the development of man are identical with those 
of the animals immediately below him in the scale ; with- 
out a doubt, in these respects, he is far nearer to the apes 
than the apes are to the dog." * 

5. Rudiments. — This is a somewhat obscure branch of 
the proofs, which requires a more detailed examination in 
order to appreciate its bearing on the general theory of evo- 
lution. A distinction is made between rudimentary and 
nascent organs. The former are absolutely useless to their 
possessor — such as the mammae of male quadrupeds, or the 
incisor teeth of ruminants, which never cut through the 
gums — or else they are of such slight service to their pres- 
ent possessors that they can not be supposed to have been 
developed under the conditions which now exist. These 
useless, or very slightly useful, organs in the human frame, 
are supposed to have been organs which had an important 

* "Descent of Man," pp. 9, 10, quoting Huxley, " Man's Place in Na- 
ture," p. 65. 



112 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

utility in the lower animals from which man is descended, 
but, by disuse at that period of life when the organ is 
chiefly used, and by inheritance at a corresponding period 
of life, they became of less and less utility in the succes- 
sive animals that were eyolved out of the preceding forms, 
until they sank into the condition of useless appendages, 
although perpetuated by force of the derivation of one 
species of animal from another, caused by the operation of 
the laws of natural and sexual selection. Nascent organs, 
on the other hand, are those which, though not fully de- 
yeloped to their entire capability, are of high service to 
their possessor, and may be carried to a higher degree of 
utility. One of the characteristics, as it is said, of rudi- 
mentary organs, is that they often become wholly sup- 
pressed in individuals, and then reappear occasionally in 
other individuals, through what is called reversion, or a 
return to ancestral peculiarities.* We are told that ''not 
one of the higher animals can be named which does not 
bear some part in a rudimentary condition ; and man forms 
no exception to the rule." f 

Among the rudiments that are peculiar to man, and 
which are supposed to be proofs of his cognate relations to 
the lower animals, we are referred to certain muscles in a 
reduced condition, which in the other animals are used to 
move, twitch, or contract the skin, and remnants of which, 
in an efficient state, are found in various parts of our 
bodies ; for instance, the muscles which raise the eyebrows, 
those which contract the scalp, those which, in some indi- 
viduals, move the external ear, and similar muscular powers 
in different parts of the body. These are adduced as illus- 
trations of the persistent transmission of an absolutely use- 
less, or almost useless, faculty, '' probably " derived from 
our remote semi-human progenitors. There is also another 

* " Descent of Man," p. 11 et seq. f Ibid. 



COMPAKISON OF MAN WITH OTHER MAMMALS. 113 

rudiment in man, found in the covering of tlie eye, and 
called by anatomists the " semi-lunar fold," which in birds 
is of great functional importance, as it can be rapidly drawn 
across the whole eyeball. In those animals in which, with its 
accessory muscles and other structures, it is well developed, 
as in some reptiles and amphibians, and in sharks, it is a 
third eyelid. In the two lower divisions of the mammalian 
series, the monotremata and the marsupials, and in some 
few of the higher mammals, as in the walrus, it is said to be 
fairly well developed. But in man, in the quadrumana, 
and most other mammals, it has become a mere rudiment. 

The sense of smell in man is also classed by Darwin and 
other naturalists among the rudiments. It is argued that 
it was not originally acquired by man as he now exists, but 
that he has inherited this power, in an enfeebled and so 
far rudimentary condition, from some early progenitor, to 
whom it was highly serviceable, and by whom it was con- 
tinually used. 

Then we have the rudiment of hair, which, so far as it 
now exists on different parts of our body, is regarded as a 
mere remnant of the uniform hairy coat of the lower ani- 
mals. Man, as he is now born, *' differs conspicuously 
from all the other primates in being almost naked." But 
this nearly nude condition was not, it is said, the condition 
of his progenitors, and it is not the condition of his co- 
descendants from the same progenitors. At some time the 
progenitors of man and his co-descendants became covered 
all over with a coat of hair. What remains upon our bodies 
of this peculiar growth, that is called hair, is what was left 
after the agency of natural selection had worked off what 
was useless to the successive animals, and sexual selection 
had operated to transmit to offspring the absence of hair 
that had accrued in the nearer progenitors and the imme- 
diate parents. The illustrations which render this view 
" probable " do not need to be repeated, nor is it necessary 



114 OREATIOIlT OR EVOLUTION? 

to follow out the speculations concerning the mode in 
which our progenitors, near or remote, became yaried in 
respect to the quantity, position, or direction of the hairs 
on various parts of their bodies. 

There are several other alleged homologues or rudiments 
which are supposed to connect man with the lower animals, 
but which, whatever may be the resemblances, it is not 
necessary to discuss in detail, because there is one consid- 
eration at least which applies to the whole of this class of 
proofs, and to that I now pass. The three great classes of 
facts on which the whole argument rests, viewing man as 
an animal and omitting all reference to his intellect, are 
the resemblances of his bodily structure to that of the other 
mammals, the similarity between his embryonic develop- 
ment and theirs, and the rudiments. I reserve for separate 
discussion the counter-proof which may be derived from 
the nature of the human mind, and the special adaptation 
of the human structure to become the temporary residence 
and instrument of a spiritual and immortal being. 

" It is," says Mr. Darwin, " no scientific explanation to 
assert that they have all [man and the other animals of the 
mammalian class] been formed on the same ideal plan."* 
The similarity of pattern is pronounced '* utterly inexplica- 
ble " upon any other hypothesis than that all these animals 
are descended from a common progenitor, and that they 
have become what they are by subsequent adaptation to 
diversified conditions. I may incur some risk in under- 
taking to suggest what is a " scientific " explanation. Cer- 
tainly I do not propose to " assert " anything. But I will 
endeavor to keep within the bounds of what I supj)ose to 
be science. I take that to be a scientific explanation 
which, embracing the important facts of natural history 

* " Descent of Man," p. 24. Consult Mr. Darwin's note on Prof. Bian- 
coni's explanation of homologous structures upon mechanical principles, 
in accordance with their uses. 



ESSENTIAL POSTULATE OF A CREATOR. 115 

as the groundwork of the reasoning, undertakes to show 
the rationality of one hypothesis that differs from another, 
when the question is. Which has the greater amount of 
probability in its favor ? 

All correct reasoning on this subject of man's descent 
as an animal begins, I presume, with the postulate of an 
Infinite Creator, haying under his power all the elements 
and forms of matter, organized and unorganized, animate 
and inanimate. There is no fundamental difference of 
opinion on this point, as I understand, between some of 
the eyolutionists and their opponents.* Omnipotence, 
boundless choice of means and ends, illimitable wisdom, a 
beneyolence that can not fail and can not err, are the con- 
ceded attributes of the being who is supposed to preside 
oyer the uniyerse ; and, howeyer difficult it may be for us 
to express a conception of infinite power and infinite wis- 
dom, as it is to describe infinite space and duration, we 
know what we mean to assume when we speak or think of 
faculties that are without limit, and of moral qualities that 
are subject to no imperfection. It is true that we haye no 
means of forming an idea of superhuman and infinite 
power but by a comparison of our own limited faculties 
with those which we assume to belong to an eternal and 
infinite God. But the nature of our own limited powers 
teaches us that there may be powers that are as far aboye 
ours as the heayens are aboye the earth, as the endless 
realms of space stretch beyond and foreyer beyond any 
measurable distance, as eternity stretches beyond and for- 
ever beyond all measurable time. At all events, the postu- 
late of an infinite God is the one common starting-point for 
the scientists of the evolution school and those who accept 
their doctrine, and for those who dissent from it. If I did 
not assume this, I could not go one step further, for with- 

* Mr. Herbert Spencer's peculiar views arc not here included in the dis- 
cussion, but they will be considered hereafter. 



116 CKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

out it there could not be a basis for any reasoning on the 
subject that would lead anywhere but to the conclusion that 
all that exists came by blind chance. This conclusion is 
rejected alike by the scientists, whose views I am now ex- 
amining, and by those who differ from them. 

In the economy of Nature, which is but another term 
for the economy of the Omnipotent Creator, there is no 
waste of power, as there is no abstention from the exercise 
of power, where its exertions are needed to accomplish an 
end. By this I mean that when a general plan of construc- 
tion is found carried out through a yariety of organizations, 
the rational inference is that so much power has been ex- 
erted as was needful to accomplish in each organization the 
objects that are common to all of them, and that no more 
power has been used in that direction. But where a special 
adaptation in some one variety of the same class of con- 
structions is needful to accomplish an object peculiar to a 
new variety, the necessary amount of power never fails to 
be exerted. A study of the animal kingdom reveals this 
great truth, as palpably as a study of the products of 
human skill reveals the fact that man, from the imperfec- 
tion of his faculties, is constantly exerting more or less 
power than was needful in his efforts to produce a new 
variety in his mechanical constructions. Experience and 
accumulated knowledge enable us to carry a general plan 
of construction through a considerable group of mechanical 
forms ; but it is when we endeavor to vary the principle of 
construction so as to produce a new and special mode of 
operation, that we either waste power in repeating the 
general plan or fail to exercise the amount of power neces- 
sary to adapt the general plan to the introduction of the 
special object at which we are aiming. Our success in 
making such adaptations is often wonderful, but our fail- 
ures evince that our imperfect faculties do not always en- 
able us to accomplish the necessary adaptations of the gen- 



ESSENTIAL POSTULATE OF A CREATOR. 117 

eral plan of coustruction to the special objects which we 
wish to attain. To the Infinite Creator, all such difi&cul- 
ties are unknown. He neither wastes power by new plans 
that are unnecessary, nor makes ^^vain repetitions," nor 
fails to exert the requisite amount of power and wisdom in 
the introduction of new and special contrivances which he 
ingrafts upon or superadds to the general plan, and which 
he has devised for the accomplishment of a new object. 
With a boundless choice of means and ends, with a skill 
that can not err, with a prescience that sees the end from 
the first conception of the design, he can repeat the general 
plan throughout any variety of constructions without any 
waste of power, and can introduce the new adaptations or 
contrivances which are to constitute a new construction, 
by the exercise of all the power that is required to accom- 
plish a special object. Whether we are to suppose that he 
does this by the establishment of certain laws which he 
leaves to operate within prescribed limits, or does it by 
special creations proceeding from direct and specific exer- 
tions of his will, the question of his power to employ the 
one method or the other remains always the same. The 
question of which was his probable method depends upon the 
force of evidence ; and upon this question we must allow 
great weight to the fact which all Nature discloses, namely, 
that the Creator does not waste power by making new plans 
of construction where an existing plan may be usefully re- 
peated, and that he does not fail to exercise the necessary 
power when he wishes to add to the general plan of construc- 
tion a new and special organism for a particular purpose. 

Is there anything presumptuous in thus speaking of the 
determination and purposes of the Omnipotent Creator ? 
We have his existence and infinite attributes conceded as 
the basis of all sound reasoning on his works. Why then 
should we not infer his purposes and his acts from his 
works ? Why should we not attribute to him a special 



118 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

design, when we can not examine Ms works without infer- 
ring such special design, unless we conclude that the most 
amazing and peculiar constructions grew up under the 
operation of causes of which we haye no sufiQcient proof, 
and in the supposed result of which there are admitted 
chasms that can not be bridged over ? 

To return now to the resemblance between the bodily 
structure of man and that of his supposed progenitors. 
The assertion is that a repetition of the same general plan 
of construction throughout a class of animals can only be 
explained upon the hypothesis of their descent from a com- 
mon progenitor. They are, it is claimed, co-descendants 
from some one ancient animal ; and however they may 
differ from each other, in all these co-descendants from 
that animal we find the same general plan of construction, 
the same ideal model repeated. Among the whole class of 
the higher mammals, we have skeletons, muscles, nerves, 
blood-vessels, internal viscera, organs, that closely corre- 
spond. What does this prove but that there was no waste 
of power, because there was no necessity in making man, 
for the formation of a general plan of construction differ- 
ent in these particulars from that which was employed in 
making the monkey, the bat, or the seal ? The similarity 
of pattern between the hand of a man or a monkey, the 
foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, or the wing of a bat, 
is pronounced ^^ utterly inexplicable " upon any hypothesis 
but that of descent from a common progenitor. But why 
is not this sameness of ideal plan just as consistent with 
the hypothesis that the same ideal plan would answer for 
the human hand or the hand of an ape, the foot of the 
horse, the flipper of the seal, or the wing of the bat ? * It 

* It is immaterial, of course, in tbis discussion, whether the formation 
of man preceded that of the other animals, according to the Platonic idea, 
or whether, as in the account given in the book of Genesis, the other ani- 
mals were first formed. So far as an ideal plan entered into all of them, 



UNIFOKMITY OF PLAN. 119 

is when you pass from such resemblances and come to the 
special contrivances which separate one animal from an- 
other by a broad line of demarkation, that you are to look 
for the adaptation of special contrivances to repetitions of 
the same ideal model through the varying species. Take, 
for example, the introduction among the mammals of the 
placental system of reproduction, parturition, and subse- 
quent nourishment of the young, combined with the nour- 
ishment of the foetus while it continues in the body of the 
mother. This system would require no material variation 
from the general plan of construction that is common to 
the different mammals of this class in respect to the parts 
where the resemblances are kept up throughout the series, 
such as those of the skeleton, muscles, nerves, viscera, and 
other organs that are found in all of them. But for the 
introduction of this peculiar system of reproduction and 
continuation of the species, there was needful a special and 
most extraordinary contrivance. If such a contrivance or 
anything like it had been produced by human skill, and 
been introduced into a mechanical structure, we should 
not hesitate to say that there had been an invention of a 
most special character. When you follow this system 
through the different animals in which it is found operating, 
and find that the period of gestation and of suckling is 
varied for each of them, that for each there is the necessary 
modification of trunk, situation of the organs, assimilation 
of food and formation of milk, and many other peculiari- 
ties, what are you to conclude but that there has been an 
adaptation of a new system to a general plan of construction, 
and that while the latter remains substantially the same, it 
has had ingrafted upon or incorporated with it a most singu- 
lar contrivance, so original, comprehensive, and flexible, 
that its characteristic principle admits of the most exact 

that plan may have been devised for and first applied to any part of the 
series, and then varied accordingly. 



120 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

working in animals that are as far asunder as man and 
the horse, or as the horse and the seal, or as the seal and 
the bat ? 

The resemblances between the embryonic development 
of man and the other mammals present another instance of 
the constantly occurring fact that there has been no waste 
of power on the one hand, and on the other no failure to 
exert the amount of power requisite to produce a new 
variation of the general principle. There is no more logi- 
cal force in the hypothesis of a common progenitor, in 
order to account for these resemblances, than there is in 
the hypothesis that the general system of embryonic de- 
velopment was first devised, and that it was then varied in 
each distinct animal according to the requirements of its 
special construction. Upon the latter supposition, there 
would be resemblances to a certain stage, and then there 
would follow the departures which we have no difficulty in 
tracing. Upon the former supposition we should expect 
to find, what we actually do find, that it is very difficult, if 
not impossible, to assign any reason for the departures, or 
to suggest how it has happened that one animal is so abso- 
lutely distinct from another. Thus, to begin with the 
embryo itself, and to trace it through its stages of develop- 
ment, we find that in man it can hardly be distinguished 
from that of other members of the vertebrate kingdom. 
This we should expect to be the case after we have learned 
the great fact that Nature operates upon a uniform princi- 
ple up to the point where variations and departures are to 
supervene. The system of embryonic development being 
devised to operate in parallel lines through all the placental 
mammals until the lines should begin to depart from each 
other so as to result in animals of different species, would 
necessarily show strong resemblances of structure until the 
departures supervened. There would be, in other words, a 
strong illustration of the truth that in the Divine economy 



EMBEYONIO DEVELOPMENT. 121 

there is no waste of power. But when the stage is reached 
at which the departures may be noted, and the lines diverge 
into the production of organized beings differing widely 
from each other, we reach an equally striking illustration 
of the corresponding truth that the amount of power neces- 
sary to produce very different results never fails to be put 
forth. There is no good reason why this latter exertion of 
power should not be attributed to special design just as 
logically and rationally as we must attribute to intentional 
purpose and infinite skill the general system of embryonic 
development which has been made for the whole class of 
the placental mammals. While, therefore, we may accept 
as a fact Prof. Huxley's statement on this branch of com- 
parative anatomy, we are under no necessity to accept 
his conclusion. To the question whether man originates 
in a different way from a dog, bird, frog, or fish, this 
anatomist answers, as already quoted : " The reply is not 
doubtful for a moment ; without question, the mode of 
origin and the early stages of the development of man 
are identical with those of the animals immediately below 
him in the scale ; without a doubt, in these respects he is 
far nearer to apes than apes are to the dog." This refers, 
of course, to the parallelism that obtains in the early stages 
of the embryonic development. It necessarily implies, at 
later stages, diverging lines, which depart more or less 
from each other, and thus we have between the ape and 
the man a nearer approach than we have between the ape 
and the dog. But how does this displace, or tend to dis- 
place, the hypothesis of a general system of embryonic de- 
velopment for all animals of a certain class, and an inten- 
tional and special variation of that system so as to produce 
different species of animals ? The identity between the 
mode of origin and the early stages of the development of 
man and those of the animals immediately below him in 
the scale, is strong proof of the applicability of the same 



122. CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

general principle of development throughout all the ani- 
mals of a certain class. • The cessation of the parallelism at 
the diverging lines is equally strong proof of a design to 
create an animal differing as man does from the ape, or as 
the ape does from the dog. The argument that these 
three species are co-descendants from a common progenitor, 
viewing man simply as an animal, is at least no stronger 
than the argument which leads to the conclusion of special 
creations. 

The same thing may be said of the liability of man to 
certain contagious or non-contagious diseases in common 
with some of the lower animals. That there is a similarity 
in the chemical composition of the blood of an entire class 
of animals, in the structure of their tissues and blood- 
vessels, so that they are subject to the same causes of in- 
flammation or to the same parasites, is proof of a uniform 
plan of the fluids and the vascular system, or, in other 
words, it evinces that here, too, there has been in these 
respects no waste of power in forming the different animals 
of the same class. But trace back the supposed pedigree 
of the animals sharing this chemical composition of the 
blood, character of tissues, and vascular system, until you 
have passed through the amphibians and reached their sup- 
posed fish progenitors. Somewhere between the fishes and 
the higher mammals, you have not only a great change in 
the chemical composition of the blood-vessels and tissues, 
but an equally great change in the apparatus by which the 
blood is oxygenated.* How can these changes have been 
brought about without a new and intentional structure of 
the vessels and the apparatus for supplying the oxygen de- 
manded for the continuation of life ? How can we ex- 
plain these changes by such agencies as the natural selec- 

* The popular terras — " fish " and " flesh " — present to the mind the 
most vivid idea of this change from the characteristic substance of one of 
these animals to that of another. 



IDEAL PLAN AND SPECIAL ADAPTATIONS. 123 

tion which is supposed to lead to the "survival of the 
fittest," and the sexual selection which is supposed to give 
to the best-appointed males of a given species the power to 
transmit to their offspring the new peculiarities which they 
have acquired through successive generations ? Do not 
these changes show that there is a line of division which 
such agencies alone can not cross ? Do they not clearly 
point to the exercise of the creative power in a special 
manner, and for special purposes ? That power being once 
exercised, the new chemical composition and mechanical 
appliances being devised, the same "ideal plan" could be 
carried through a new class of animals by a repetition 
which is in accordance with the economy of Nature, and 
which an infinite power could adapt to the formation of 
animals, each of which was designed to perpetuate its own 
species and no other. Hence we should expect to find in 
the animals sharing in the same formation of the blood and 
the vascular system a corresponding process of healing the 
parts severed by a wound, and a continuous secretion from 
such vessels as have not been cut away ; but we should not 
expect to find the stumps growing into a new and perfect 
part, to take the place of what has been removed by ampu- 
tation.* We should expect to find the same drugs affect- 
ing different animals of the same class alike ; and when 
the nervous system of a class of animals is upon the same 
general plan, we should expect to find them similarly af- 
fected by stimulants. But these resemblances do not 
militate very strongly against the hypothesis of special 
creations, when we consider that it is according to the 
universal economy of the Omnipotent Creator to employ 
the necessary, and no more than the necessary, power in 
originating a plan that may be applied to the formation of 

* See the note on amputation, or severance of parts, at the end of this 
chapter. 



124 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

a distinct class of beings, and that bis adaptations of this 
plan to further and specific constructions of beings belong- 
ing to a general class, but differing widely from each other, 
are among the strongest and plainest proofs of his infinite 
power and the nature of his methods. 

In regard to the '* rudiments" that are found in man, 
the theory of Mr. Darwin can be best stated in his own 
words : *'In order to understand the existence of rudi- 
mentary organs, we have only to suppose that a former 
progenitor possessed the parts in question in a perfect state, 
and that under changed habits of life they became greatly 
reduced, either from simple disuse or through the natural 
selection of those individuals which were least encumbered 
with a superfluous part, aided by the other means previous- 
ly indicated." * But, in order to do Justice to this theory, 
it is necessary to repeat the description and operation of 
the supposed agencies of natural and sexual selection. 
Natural selection is an occurrence which takes place among 
the individuals of a certain species in the struggle for ex- 
istence, whereby those who are best appointed secure the 
necessary supply of food, and the weaker or less active are 
either directly destroyed in the contest or perish for want 
of nourishment. The " fittest " having survived, they have 
the best chance of procreating their kind, and are likely to 
have the most progeny. To these individuals there comes 
in aid the sexual selection, which means chiefly the victory 
of the fittest males over their less fit competitors for the 
possession of the females. Whatever peculiarities of struct- 
ure or development, or diminution of structure or devel- 
opment, these fittest males possess, they would transmit to 
their offspring. This tendency would be enhanced by the 
varying conditions of life through which the successive 
generations might have to pass ; so that if the former pro- 

* " Descent of Man," p. 25. 



EUDIMENTS. 125 

genitor possessed naturally an organ in a perfect state, but 
ceased to make use of it, and for thousands of generations 
its use went on diminishing, it would sink into the condi- 
tion of a mere rudiment. Supposing this to be a partially 
true explanation of the modes in which organs become rudi- 
mentary, how does it militate against the idea of separate 
creations ? We have ''only to suppose" that the first men 
possessed, for example, the power of moving the skin all 
over their bodies by the contraction of certain muscles, 
and that their remote descendants lost it everywhere ex- 
cepting in a few parts, where it remains in an efficient 
state, and that it has become varied in different individu- 
als. The process by which organs become rudimentary is 
an hypothesis just as consistent with the separate creation 
of man as it is with his being a co-descendant from some 
lower animal whose descendants branched into men, apes, 
horses, seals, bats, etc. ; for, on the supposition of the 
separate creation of all these different animals, each species 
might have been originally endowed with this power of 
muscular contraction of the skin, and in their descendants it 
might have been retained or varied or have become more or 
less rudimentary, according to its utility to the particular 
species. The truth is, that our own faculties of creation or 
construction, when we undertake to deal with matter and 
its properties, are so imperfect, and that which constitutes 
living organisms is so utterly beyond our reach, that we do 
not sufficiently remember how entirely it is within the 
compass of the infinite Power, which has given to matter 
all the properties that it possesses and has living organisms 
under its absolute control, to form a system of construction 
and operation for beings of entirely distinct characters, car- 
rying it through each of them in parallel lines, or causing 
it to diverge into varying results with an economy that 
neither wastes the constructive power nor fails to exert it 
where it is needed. To argue that the presence of rudi- 



126 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

ments in different animals, in different comparative states 
of develojpment or efficiency, or in a purely useless condi- 
tion, can only be explained by a descent from some remote 
common progenitor, is what the logicians call a non sequi- 
tur. It overlooks the illimitable faculty of the creating 
Power, and disregards the great fact that such a power acts 
by an economy that is saving where uniformity will accom- 
plish what is intended, that is profuse where variation is 
needful, and that can guide its own exertions of power, or 
its abstention from such exertions, by unerring wisdom, to 
the most varied and exact results. 

I trust that by the use of the term ** economy " in speak- 
ing of what is observable in the works of the Creator, I 
shall be understood as comprehending both the avoidance 
of unnecessary and the exertion of all necessary power. Of 
the degree of necessity in any exercise of a power which we 
suppose to be infinite, we can only judge by what we can 
see. If omnipotence and omniscience are to be predicated 
of the being who is supposed to preside over the universe, 
it is rational to conclude, from all that we can discover, 
that, in applying a uniform system of construction to differ- 
ent animals of a certain general class, he acted upon a prin- 
ciple that his unerring faculties enabled him to see was a 
comprehensive one ; and that in producing variations of 
that system of construction that would result in adapting 
its uniformity to the varying conditions of the different 
species, he acted by the same boundless wisdom and power. 
If these postulates of the Divine attributes are conceded, 
rudiments do not by any means necessarily lead to the con- 
clusion that all the animals of a certain class are co-descend- 
ants from some remote common progenitor, for they do not 
exclude the hypothesis that each distinct animal was formed 
upon a general plan of construction that could be applied 
throughout the class, but that it was varied according to 
the special conditions of its intended being. Organs or 



GENERAL LAWS. 127 

parts may thus have become more or less rudimentary with- 
out resorting to the supposition of a common progenitor for 
the whole class. That supposition, indeed, makes it neces- 
sary to assume that the infinite Creator fashioned some one 
animal, and then, abstaining from all work of further di- 
rect creation, left all the other animals to be evolyed out of 
that one by the operation of secondary causes that fail even 
as a theory to account for what we see, and that can not be 
traced through any results that have yet been discovered. 
Wherever we pause in the ascending scale of the Darwinian 
descent of man, wherever we place the first special act of 
creative power, whether we put it at the fish-like animal 
of the most remote antiquity, and call that creature the 
original progenitor of all the vertebrata, or whether we 
suppose a special creation to have occurred at the intro- 
duction of the mammalian series, or anywhere else, we 
have to account for changes of system, new constructions, 
elaborately diversified forms, by the operation of agencies 
that were incapable of producing the results, if we are to 
judge of their capacity by anything that we have seen or 
known of their effects. 

I will conclude this chapter by expressing as accurately 
as I can what has struck me as the excessive tendency of 
modern science to resolve everything into the operation of 
general laws, or into what we call secondary causes. I may 
be able to suggest nothing new upon this part of the sub- 
ject, but I shall at least be able, I hope, to put my own 
mind in contact with that of the reader by explaining what 
has impressed me in the speculations of those who lay so 
much stress upon the potency of general laws to produce 
the results which we see in Nature. /t)f course, I do not 
question the great fact that the infinite Power acts by and 
through the uniform methods from which we are accus- 
tomed to infer what we call laws ; which in physics is noth- 
ing but a deduction of regularity and system from that 



128 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

which we see to be j)erpetually and invariably happening, j 
^Now, I do not enter here into the question of the tendency 
of modern science to displace our religious ideas of a special 
Providence, by attributing everything in Nature to the 
operation of lixed laws of matter ; or its tendency, in other 
words, to remove the infinite Being at a greater distance 
from us than that in which our religious feelings like to 
contemplate him. ' I am perfectly sensible that in truth the 
infinite God is just as near to us, when we regard him as 
acting by general laws and secondary causes, as when we be- 
lieve him to be exercising a direct and special power. I am 
equally sensible that it is in the very nature of infinite power, 
wisdom, and benevolence to be able and willing to ordain 
uniform and fixed principles of action. That Power which 
gives to matter all its properties may well be supposed to 
have established uniformity and regularity of movements, 
forces, combinations, and qualities. How supremely con- 
sistent this uniformity and regularity are, with what stu- 
pendous accuracy they are kept forever in operation, we are 
more or less able to discern ; and that benevolence which is 
believed to accompany the power may well be supposed 
to have intended that its intelligent and rational creatures 
should be able in some degree to discover and to avail them- 
selves of these unvarying laws of the physical world. But 
are these laws to be supposed to be the only methods by 
which the infinite Will has ever acted ? Is it to be assumed 
that, having settled and established these perpetual princi- 
ples, on which matter, organized or unorganized, is to act, 
he leaves everything to their operation and abstains from 
all further exertion of his creative power for any special 
purpose ? Has he given to these general laws a potency to 
produce, in and of themselves, all the results ^ In other 
words, has he affixed to their operation no limitations, or 
has he set bounds to them, and reserved to himself, by di- 
rect, specific, and occasional exercise of his will and power. 



AMPUTATION OF PARTS. 129 

for new purposes, to produce results for which the general 
laws were not ordained ? 

It is not necessary here to enter into the consideration 
of what are called "miracles." These, in their true mean- 
ing, are special interpositions, which the Divine Power is 
supposed to make, by a suspension or interruption of the 
established laws of Nature ; and, whatever may be the 
grounds of our belief or our unbelief in such occurrences, 
they are not exercises of power such as those which are sup- 
posed to take place in special creations of new beings. That 
the hypothesis of special creations of new beings involves 
no interruption or displacement of the fixed laws of Nature, 
is quite manifest. 

Note A, 

Note on Amputation, or Severance of Parts. — As Mr. Darwin at- 
tached some importance to a fact which he asserted respecting the efforts 
of Nature to restore a part of an organism which has been severed by 
amputation, I think it well to quote his statement, and to point out what 
I believe to be an inaccuracy. His statement is this : " His [man's] 
wounds are repaired by the same process of healing, and the stumps left 
after the amputation of his limbs, especially during an early embryonic 
period, occasionally possess some power of regeneration, as in the lowest 
animals." It is not quite apparent what he means by amputation during 
an early embryonic period. If he is to be understood as referring to a case 
of complete severance of any part of an embryo before birth, it has not 
been demonstrated that such a severance has been followed by a successful 
effort of Nature to replace the severed part ; and it is difficult to under- 
stand how there could be such an amputation during embryonic life without 
destroying the life of the embryo ; or, if the severed part were one of the 
extremities, how there could be a new extremity formed. In such a case, 
if life continued and birth were to take place, the animal must be born in 
an imperfect state. In regard to amputations taking place at any time 
after birth, if the expression " some power of regeneration " means to imply 
a new formation to take the place of the severed part, the assertion is not 
correct. What occurs in such cases may be illustrated by the very common 
accident of the severance of the end of a human finger at the root of the 
nail. If the incision is far enough back to remove the whole of the vessels 
which secrete the homy substance that forms the nail, there will be no after- 



130 CREATIOIT OR EVOLUTION? 

growth of anything resembling a nail. If some of those vessels are left in 
the stump, there will be continuous secretion and deposit of the horny sub- 
stance, which may go so far as to form a crude resemblance to a nail. But 
if all the vessels which constitute the means of perpetuating a perfect nail 
are not left in their normal number and action, there can be no such thing 
as the formation of a new nail. Whether it is correct to speak of the im- 
perfect continuation of a few of the vessels to secrete the substance which 
it is their normal function to secrete, as a " power of regeneration," is more 
than doubtful, if by such a power is meant a power to make a new and com- 
plete structure to take the place of the structure that has been cut away. 
It is nothing more than the continued action of a few vessels, less in num- 
ber than the normal system required for the continued growth and renewal 
of the part in question. The abortive product in such cases looks like an un- 
successful effort of Nature to make a new structure in place of the old one ; 
but it is not in reality such an effort. The fact that the same thing occurs, 
in just the same way and to a corresponding extent, in different animals, has 
no tendency to prove anything excepting that these different animals share 
the same general system of secreting vessels for the formation and perpetu- 
ation of the several parts of their structures. It has no tendency to prove 
that they are co-descendants from a common ancestral stock, for on the 
hypothesis of their special and independent creation a common system of 
secreting vessels would be entirely consistent with their peculiar and special 
constructions. 



CHAPTER lY. 

The doctrine of evolution according to Herbert Spencer. 

Passing from Mr. Darwin as the representative of that 
class of naturalists who have undertaken to assign the pedi- 
gree of man by tracing the stages of his development back 
to the lowest and crudest form of animal life, I now come 
to a philosopher whose speculations carry the doctrine of 
evolution through every field of inquiry, and who, finding, 
as he supposes, evidence of its operation throughout all the 
other realms of the physical and the moral word, contends 
that it also obtains in the animal kingdom. It were to be 
wished that this writer, whose intellect is of the order of 
minds to which we naturally look for a judicial treatment 
of such themes, had been a little less dogmatic in his treat- 
ment of the doctrine of special creations. Mr. Spencer has, 
indeed, consistently recognized the necessity of trying the 
question between the hypothesis of special creations and 
the hypothesis of evolution, as one to be decided, if it is to 
be decided at all, only by an examination of evidence. But 
to one who approaches this question in a spirit of inquiry, 
and with a desire to learn whatever can be said on both 
sides, it is somewhat disappointing to find that the most 
eminent writer of the evolution school is unjust in his 
treatment of the belief which he opposes. There can be 
no objection to advocacy, or to strong and decided advo- 
cacy, when settled convictions are to be vindicated. But 
with advocacy we may expect that kind of fairness which 



132 OKEATIOX OR EVOLUTION? 

consists in a full recognition of the opposite argument. A 
great master of dialectics once laid it down as a maxim of 
advocacy, ** State the case of your opponent as strongly as 
you know how, stronger if possible than he states it him- 
self, and then answer it, if you can." Some instances in 
which Mr. Spencer has not followed this wise rule may 
now be mentioned : 

1. He attacks with great vigor the hypothesis that liv- 
ing beings resulted from special creations, as a primitive 
hypothesis ; and because it is a very ancient belief he pro- 
nounces it to be probably untrue. He even goes so far as 
to assert that its antiquity raises a presumption against it. 
He classes it among a family of beliefs which began in 
primitive ages, and which have one after another been de- 
stroyed by advancing knowledge, until this one is almost 
the only member of the family that survives among educated 
people.* He says that if you catechise any one who holds 
this belief as to the source from which he derived it, he is 
forced to confess that it was put into his mind in child- 
hood, as one portion of a story which, as a whole, he has 
long since rejected. It will give way at last, along with all 
the rest of the family of beliefs which have already been 
given up. It may be that the arguments of those whose 
controversial writings on this subject Mr. Spencer had be- 
fore him, relied on the antiquity of this belief as one of the 
strongest proofs of its probable truth. 1 have not looked 
to see how any writer on that side of the question has used 
the antiquity of the doctrine of special creations. But it 
is certainly not in accordance with the sound rule, even of 
advocacy, to state the argument in support of the belief 
which you oppose with less than the force that may be 
given to it, whether your opponents have or have not given 
to it the true force that belongs to it. The mere antiquity 

* " The Principles of Biologj," by Herbert Spencer, vol. i, p. 334 et 
scq. I use the American edition, D. Appleton & Co., 1881. 



PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. 133 

of the belief in special creations has this force and no more : 
that a belief which began in the primitive ages of mankind, 
and has survived through all periods of advancing knowl- 
edge, must have something to recommend it. It is not 
one of those things that can be swept away with contempt 
as a nursery-tale, originating in times of profound igno- 
rance and handed down from generation to generation with- 
out inquiry. That it has survived, after the rejection of 
other beliefs that originated at the same period — survived 
in minds capable of dealing with the evidence in the light 
of increasing knowledge — is proof that it has something 
more to rest upon than the time of its origin. If some of 
its defenders now assert its antiquity as the sole or the 
strongest argument in its favor, its opponents should not 
assume that this is the only or the best argument by which 
it can be supported. Nor can it be summarily disposed of 
by classifying it as one of a family of beliefs that originated 
in times of ignorance, and that have mostly disappeared 
from the beliefs held by educated people. Its association 
with a special class of mistaken beliefs affords no intrinsic 
improbability of its truth. Every belief has come to be 
regarded as a mistaken or a true one, not according to its 
associated relations with other beliefs that have come to be 
regarded as unfounded, but according to the tests that the 
knowledge of the age has been able to apply to it. Take 
the whole catalogue of beliefs that began to be held in the 
darkest ages, and it will be found that their association has 
had no influence beyond inducing incorrect habits of rea- 
soning on certain subjects, or a habit of accepting the offi- 
cial authority of those who claimed to be the special cus- 
todians of truth. These intellectual habits have been tem- 
porary in their influence, and have gradually changed. 
Every one of the beliefs that have been given up by the let- 
tered or the unlettered part of mankind, has been given up 
because better knowledge of a special character has come 



134t CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

to show that it is unfounded, and because mere ofiBcial au- 
thority has ceased to have the power that it once had. If 
a belief has survived from a remote antiquity among those 
who are competent to judge of the evidence in its favor, by 
comparing the phenomena that increasing knowledge has 
accumulated, the force of the fact that it has so survived 
is not weakened by its association for a period with other 
beliefs that are now rejected. 

Mr. Spencer asserts that, as the supposition of special 
creations is discredited by its origin in a time when men 
were profoundly ignorant, so conversely the supposition 
that, races of organisms have been gradually evolved is cred- 
ited by its origin, because it is a belief that has come into 
existence in the most instructed class, living in these better 
instructed times. This is a kind of argumentation that is 
often the result of a love of antithesis. The soundness of 
the last branch of the proposition appears to depend upon 
the soundness of the first branch. Make it to apj)ear that 
the origin of the elder hypothesis is unfavorable by reason 
of the time of its' origin, and it seems to follow that the 
origin of the modern hypothesis is favorable by reason of 
its time of origin. But this antithesis does not express the 
exact truth in either branch of it. It is not because of its 
antiquity, or of the character of the times in which it was 
first believed, that the doctrine of special creations can be 
shown to be irrational or improbable. There is no pre- 
sumption against the truth of any belief, to be derived 
from the fact that it was held by persons who also held 
some erroneous beliefs on other subjects. If there were, 
nothing could be worthy of belief unless it could show a 
recent origin, or at least until demonstration of its truth 
had overcome the presumption against it. On the other 
hand, there is no presumption in favor of the truth of a 
new theory to be derived from the fact that it is new, or 
that it originated among those who think that they do not 



SPECIAL CREATIOITS. 135 

hold any erroneous beliefs, or because it originated in a 
comparatively very enlightened age. Every physical and 
every moral theory, unless we mean to be governed by mere 
authority, whether it is ancient or recent, must be judged 
by its merits, according to the evidence. 

2. Another of Mr. Spencer's naked assertions is that the 
belief in special creations is " not countenanced by a single 
fact." Not only did no man '^ever see a special creation," 
but '^ no one ever found indirect proof of any kind that a 
special creation had taken place." In support of this sweep- 
ing dogma, he adduces a habit of the naturalists who main- 
tain special creations to locate them in some region remote 
from human observation.* This is another instance of not 
stating the case of your adversary as strongly as you might 
state it, or as he states it himself. While no naturalist and 
no other person who believes in special creations ever saw 
one take place, indirect and circumstantial evidence tend- 
ing to show that the earth is full of them has been accumu- 
lated to an enormous amount. /It is a monstrous extrava- 
gance to assert that the hypothesis is " absolutely without 
support of any kind." What if Mr. Spencer's opponents 
were to retort that no man ever saw an instance in which 
an animal of a distinct species had been evolved out of one 
of an entirely different organization ; that there is no ex- 
ternal evidence to support the hypothesis of such deriva- 
tions, and that the naturalists of the evolution school ha- 
bitually place the scene of operations in the region of scien- 
tific imagination ? ' The discovery of truth is not likely to 
be much advanced by this mode of attacking opposite opin- 
ions, yet it could be used with as much propriety on the 
one side of this question as on the other. 

3. Next, and completing the misrepresentation, we have 
the assertion that, '^besides being absolutely without evi- 

* " Biology," i, p. 336. 



136 CREATION OR EVOLUTION ? 

dence to give it external support, this hypothesis of spe- 
cial creations can not support itself internally — can not be 
framed into a coherent thought. . . . Immediately an at- 
tempt is made to elaborate the idea into anything like defi- 
nite shape, it proves to be a pseud-idea, admitting of no 
definite shape. Is it supposed that a new organism when 
specially created is created out of nothing ? If so, there is 
a supposed creation of matter, and the creation of matter 
is inconceivable, implies the establishment of a relation in 
thought between nothing and something — a relation of 
which one term is absent — an impossible relation. . . . 
Those who entertain the proposition that each kind of or- 
ganism results from divine interposition do so because they 
refrain from translating words into thoughts. The case is 
one of those where men do not really believe, but believe 
they believe. For belief, properly so called, implies a men- 
tal representation of the thing believed ; and no such men- 
tal representation is here possible."* 

When I first read this passage I could hardly trust 
the evidence of my eye-sight. It seemed as if the types 
must have in some way misrepresented the distinguished 
writer ; for I could scarcely conceive how a man of Mr. 
Spencer's reputation as a thinker could have deliberately 
penned and published such a specimen of logic run riot. 
It reads like some of the propositions propounded by the 
scholastics of the middle ages. But, having assured my- 
self that the American edition of his work is a correct re- 
print, and having carefully pondered and endeavored to 
ascertain his meaning, I was forced to the conclusion that 
he supposes this to be a conclusive answer to the idea of 
absolute creation in respect to anything whatever, because, 
when put into a logical formula, one term of the relation 
is nothing, and the other term is something. Logical for- 

* " Biology," i, pp. 336, 337. 



ABSOLUTE CREATION CONCEIVABLE. 137 

mulas are not always the best tests of the possibility of an 
intellectual conception, or of what the mind can represent 
to itself by thought, although to a certain class of readers 
or hearers they often appear to be a crushing refutation of 
the opposite opinion or belief against which they are em- 
ployed. 

/^ Is there in truth anything impossible because it is un- 
thinkable in the idea of absolute creation ? Is the creation 
of matter, for example, inconceivable ? It certainly is not 
if we adopt the postulate of an infinite Creator. That post- 
ulate is just as necessary to the evolutionist who maintains 
the ordination of fixed laws or systems of matter, by the 
operation of which the organized forms of matter have 
been evolved, as it is to those who maintain that these 
forms are special creations. Who made the laws that have 
been impressed upon matter ? "Were they made at all, or 
were they without any origin, self-existing and eternal ? 
If they were made, they were made out of nothing, for 
nothing preceded them. Then apply to them the logical 
formula, and say that one term of the relation is absent — 
is mere nothingness — and so there is an impossible relation, 
a relation in thought between nothing and something, which 
is inconceivable. This dilemma is not escaped by assert- 
ing, as Mr. Spencer does, that "the creation of force is 
Just as inconceivable as the creation of matter." It is ne- 
cessary to inquire what he means by a "conceivable" idea. 
If he means that we can not trace or understand the process 
by which either force or matter was created, our inability 
may be at once conceded. But if he means that, granting 
the postulate of an infinite creating power, we can not con- 
ceive of the possibility that matter and all the forces that 
reside in it or govern it were called into being by the will of 
that power, the assertion is not true. Human faculties are 
entirely equal to the conception of an infinite creating power, 
whatever may be the strength or the weakness of the proof 



138 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

by wliicli the existence of such a power is supported ; and 
if there is such a power it is a contradiction in terms to 
assert that absolute creation, or the formation of *' some- 
thing" out of '^ nothing," is an impossible conception. 
Such an assertion is simply a specious play upon words, or 
else it involyes the negation of an infinite creating power, 
/^he term '^ creation," as used in all modern philosophy, 
implies, ex vi termini, the act of causing to exist ; and, 
unless we assume that nothing which exists was ever caused 
to exist, we must suppose that the causing power was alike 
capable of giving existence to matter and to the forces that 
reside in ity' 

The reason why the Greek philosophers did not embrace 
the idea of absolute creation was not because it was an 
unthinkable idea, or one incapable of representation in 
thought. They were, as we have seen, surrounded by a 
mythology which attributed the origin of the world to 
polytheistic agencies. They struggled against the cosmog- 
ony of poetical and popular traditions in an effort to find 
a cause of a different character. Monotheism, the concep- 
tion of the one only and omnipotent God, freed philosophy 
from the great want which had hampered its speculations. 
This want was the conception of divine power, as abstracted 
from substance or the qualities of substance. When this 
conception had been obtained, absolute creation was seen to 
be a legitimate deduction from the illimitable scope and 
nature of the power which monotheism imputed to the 
Being supposed to preside over the universe, and to have 
existed before all the objects which the universe contains : 
and this conception of the act of creation thus became 
equally capable of representation in words and in thought. 
You may say that it has no evidence to support it ; that it 
leads to contradictory ideas of the attributes claimed for the 
Creator ; that upon the hypothesis of those attributes, his 
works are inexplicable. Whether you can say this truly or 



MEANING OF CREATION. 139 

not, you can not say that absolute creation is inconceivable ; 
and unless you mean to claim Miat neither matter nor force 
was ever created, that there never was a being competent to 
make either the one or the other to exist, you can not deny 
the probability that both were called into being by a definite 
and specific exercise of power. Mr. Spencer's philosophy 
manifestly leads to the conclusion that there is no God, or 
no such Grod as the hypothesis of special creations supposes, 
or such as the hypothesis of evolution necessarily calls for. 
If I understand him rightly, he rejects the idea of any cre- 
ation, whether of matter, or force, or the properties of 
matter, or even of law of any kind, physical or moral. 
Hence it is that I admit the necessity of treating the exist- 
ence of the Omnipotent Creator as an independent question 
to be judged upon moral evidence ; and hence, too, in rea- 
soning upon the probable methods of the Almighty, I main- 
tain that the postulate of his existence is alike necessary to 
the evolutionist and to those who believe in special cre- 
ations, and that both must adopt the same cardinal attri- 
butes as attributes of his power and character. 

It is well to pursue this particular topic somewhat fur- 
ther, because this special difficulty arising from the creation 
of something out of nothing, triumphantly propounded by 
a certain class of philosophers, is echoed by others as if it 
concluded the question. The received meaning of language 
is often a great help to the mind in representing to itself in 
thought the idea that is expressed by the word. The word 
contains and suggests the thought. Lexicographers are the 
learned persons, one part of whose business it is to exhibit 
the thought that is represented by a word, not according to 
the popular and, perhaps, uncertain or erroneous use of the 
term, or according to its secondary meanings, but accord- 
ing to the exact correspondence between the word and the 
idea which it conveys in its primary and philosophic usage. 
The definition given to our English verb " create," in its 



140 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

primary and philosophical sense, is : '^To produce," ^'to 
bring into being from nothing"; "to cause to exist." 
"Creation," as a noun expressing the act described by the 
verb, is defined as "the act of creating : the act of causing 
to exist, and especially, the act of bringing this world into 
existence." "Created," as the past participle which de- 
scribes what has been done, is defined as "formed from noth- 
ing : caused to exist ; produced ; generated."* This is -the 
sense in which the word is used in the English yersion of the 
first verse of the book of Genesis : " In the beginning God 
created the heavens and the earth " ; and whatever may be 
said about the source from which Moses derived his knowl- 
edge of the fact which he relates, there can be no doubt 
about the nature of the fact which he intended to assert. 
Now, does the lexicographer, when he describes creation as 
the act of causing something to exist, or the act of producing 
something out of nothing, present an idea that is incapable 
of mental representation — a relation impossible in thought ? 
What he means to express is clear enough. Is the idea 
which he expresses impossible to be conceived by the mind ? 
Xlt will be a good test of this supposed insuperable diffi- 
culty to apply the term "creation" to some human act. 
When Shakespeare composed the tragedy of "Hamlet," he 
created something in the sense which we are here consider- 
ing, f He created that something out of nothing : for he 
caused something to exist which did not exist before. He 
did not merely inscribe certain words upon paper, by the 
material process of writing, and afterward cause the same 
words to be repeated by the material process of printing 

* Webster's " Dictionary of the English Language." 

\ Let it be remembered that the sense which is here considered compre- 
hends not only material objects, but also ideas, images, and in short what- 
ever, in its kind, had no previous existence. This is just as true of an 
original poem, or picture, or statue, or musical composition, as it is of a 
machine that is both original and new as a piece of mechanism. 



CREATING POWER. 141 

upon another paper. He gaye intellectual existence to cer- 
tain male and female persons of his imagination, carried them 
through certain periods of their imaginary lives, and made 
them and their history an imperishable intellectual idea. 
It is entirely immaterial to the present discussion that such 
a product of the imagination presents to us nothing but 
intellectual ideas ; that Hamlet and Ophelia, and the King 
and Queen, and all the rest of the dramatis personcB, were 
mere creatures of the poet's fancy. Although they were 
nothing but intellectual conceptions, they were " creations " 
in the sense of being intellectual products that never existed 
in idea before the poet made them, and therefore they were 
made out of nothing. Now, although we can not look into 
the mind of Shakespeare and describe the process by which 
he formed these creatures of his imagination, we experience 
no difficulty when we contemplate these imaginary person- 
ages, in representing in thought what we mean when we 
say that he '^ created ^' them. It would be simple absurdity 
to say that he did not create these ideal persons, because 
the notion of creation implies the formation of something 
out of nothing. That is the very meaning of creation in 
its primary and philosophical sense ; and, when applied to 
works of the human imagination, it presents to us an idea 
that is perfectly capable of representation in fhought. y 

Pass from this illustration of the idea of human creation 
to the hypothesis of a supreme being, possessing infinite 
power, and existing before the material universe began. 
The hypothesis of his existence includes the power to call 
into being things that had no previous being, whether these 
things be matter and material properties or moral and in- 
tellectual ideas. The whole realms of possible existence, 
spiritual and material, the whole void which consists in 
mere nothingness, are, according to the hypothesis, under 
his absolute sway. He holds the power of absolute crea- 
tion ; and the power this hypothesis imputes to him is no 



142 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

more incapable of representation in thought than is the 
inferior and limited i)ower of creation, which we know to 
be performed by the finite human intellect, and which we 
have no difficulty in conceiving as a true creating faculty. 
When Watt formed the steam-engine, he did something 
more than to place certain portions of matter in certain 
relations, and make them to operate in a certain manner so 
as to produce a certain effect. He made the intellectual 
plan of a certain arrangement of matter ; and to this act of 
giving being to something, both intellectual and physical, 
which did not exist before, we ascribe in its true sense the 
act of creation, and the idea we express by the term is per- 
fectly capable of mental representation. 

*^ Those," says Mr. Spencer, *' who entertain the propo- 
sition that each kind of organism results from a divine in- 
terposition, do so because they refrain from translating 
words into thoughts " ; and he adds, quite truly, that there 
is no assignable mode or conceivable way in which the 
making of a new organism can be described. Let this be 
applied to some new mechanical structure produced by the 
intellect and hand of man. It is a result or product of 
human interposition. When we describe this human prod- 
uct as an invention, do we refrain from translating words 
into thoughts because we can not describe the process of 
invention ? or, in other words, because we can not assign 
the mode in which the mind of the inventor reached his 
conception, are we to conclude that he did not attain to 
the conception which is plainly embodied in the machine 
that stands before our eyes ? If we say that he created 
something, do we make a statement that can not be con- 
sistently imagined because we can not assign the mode in 
which his mind operated when it thought out the idea and 
constructed the plan ? We can see how he put together 
certain material substances, and how they operate ; but we 
can not see or describe the mental process by which he ob- 



CPwEATION POSSIBLE. 143 

tained his conception. Yet we ascribe to his act, and 
rightly ascribe to it, the idea of creation ; and the term 
represents a thought of the mind that is as capable of being 
imagined as the word is of being spoken and understood. 

When Eaphael painted the Sistine Madonna, he formed 
in his mind an image of the heaven-chosen mother of 
Christ, and the marvelous skill of his artist hand trans- 
ferred that face of surpassing loveliness to the canvas. The 
story that it tells may be a fiction or a fact. The image is 
a reality. It was a new existence ; and, if we call it a crea- 
tion, do we use a word which we can not translate into 
thought because we do not know how the painter attained 
to that sweet conception of the human mother's tenderness, 
and the dignity of her appointed office as the handmaiden 
of the Lord ? 

There is nothing unphilosophical in thus ascribing what 
is done by finite human faculties and what is done by the' 
infinite Creator to a power that is of the same nature, but 
which in the one being is limited and imperfect, and in the 
other is superhuman and boundless. If we know, as we 
certainly do, that weak and finite man can perform some 
acts of creation, can cause some things to exist that did not 
previously exist, how much more may we safely conclude 
that a being of infinite powers can call into existence, out 
of the primeval nothingness, objects of the most stupendous 
proportions, of the nicest adaptations, of the most palpable 
uses^can cause matter and force and law to be where be- 
fore all was vacuity, where force was unknown, where law 
had never operated ! When the mind contemplates that 
Omnipotent Power, it reaches forth to an awful presence ; 
but it does not contemplate something of which it can not 
conceive, for its own inferior faculties teach it that creation 
is a possible occurrence. 

We do not need to be and are not indebted to supersti- 
tion, to tradition, or to deceptive words, for the idea of 



144: CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

creation. At an immeasurable distance from the Almighty 
Power, we ourselves are constantly creating ; and it is when 
we do so that our acts resemble his in their nature, however 
below his productions may be the productions of our poor 
human faculties. It is one of the proofs of our relation- 
ship to the infinite Creator, a proof for which we are not 
indebted solely to revelation, that we are endowed in this 
imperfect degree with a power that resembles his. It is 
also one of the chief of the characteristics that distinguish 
man from the other animals : for, wonderful as are the 
constructions made by some of them, they are uniformly 
made under the involuntary and uncontrollable impulse of 
an implanted instinct ; whereas, the constructions of man 
are made by the exercise of a constructive faculty that is 
guided by his will, which enables him to effect variations 
of structure entirely unattainable by any other being that 
exists on this earth.- All the other animals are confined in 
the exercise of their constructive faculties to an invariable 
model, appointed for each of them according to the circum- 
stances of its being. The range of choice is bounded by 
the limitations of the instinct under which the animal is 
compelled to do its work. It may appear to select a favor- 
able site for its habitation, to cull its materials with judg- 
ment, to guard against disturbance from the elements or 
from enemies. But we have not much reason to suppose 
that any of these things are done from anything but an 
irresistible impulse, and we certainly have no reason to sup- 
pose that the animal has the moral power to do them or to 
refrain from them. To man alone does there appear to 
have been given the power of varying his constructions by 
the exercise of an intelligent will ; and that will is bounded 
only by the limitations of his power over matter : so that, 
in respect to material structures, the power of man to make 
creations approaches nearest to the power of the Almighty 
Creator, and is, within its limitations, a true creating 



CURRENT THEOLOGY DISREGARDED. 145 

power. In the realm of intellectual or ideal creations, tlie 
resemblance of human and divine power is the same, and 
the limitations upon the former are those fixed by the finite 
nature of human faculties.* 

4. Mr. Spencer has a great deal to urge against '^the 
current theology," and he treats of some of the theological 
diflBculties in which those who espouse the hypothesis of 
special creations entangle themselves, f I have nothing to 
do with the current theology. I do not borrow from it or 
rely upon it, and do not undertake to disentangle its pro- 
fessors from any of the difficulties in which they may have 
involved themselves. The only question that interests me 
is, whether the objections propounded by this philosopher 
as an answer to the hypothesis of special creations present 
insuperable difficulties to one who does not depend upon 
the current theology for arguments, explanations, or means 
of judgment. I shall therefore endeavor to state fairly and 
fully the chief of the supposed difficulties, without consid- 
ering the answer that is made to them by those who are 
taken as the representatives of the current theology. 

Put into a condensed form, one of Mr. Spencer's grand 
objections to the belief in special creations of organized 

* Perhaps I owe an apology to a large class of readers for having be- 
stowed so much attention upon the logical formula with which Mr. Spencer 
aims to dispose of the idea of creation. But I have observed, especially 
among young persons and others whose habits of thinking are unformed or 
not corrected by sound and comprehensive reasoning, a popular reception 
of this particular dogma, which makes it necessary to subject it to some 
careful analysis. In fact, one of my chief objects in writing this book has 
been to contribute what I might to the formation of habits of testing philo- 
sophical and scientific theories by something better than specious assump- 
tions which can be thrown into the plausible form of logical propositions. 
There is nothing more valuable than logic, when its forms represent a true" 
and correct ratiocination ; and, when they do not, there is nothing that is 
more delusive. It needs some discipline of mind to enable people to see 
when logic is valuable and when it is not. f "Biology," i, p. 340 d scq. 



146 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

beings is that it involves a deliberate intention on the part 
of the Creator to produce misery, suffering, pain, and an 
incalculable amount of evil, or else that there was an ina- 
bility to prevent these results. Omitting for the present 
the human race, and confining our first view to the other 
animals, the earth is largely peopled by creatures which 
inflict on each other and on themselves a vast amount of 
suffering. The animals are endowed with countless differ- 
ent pain-inflicting appliances and instincts ; the earth has 
been a scene of warfare among all sentient creatures ; and 
geology informs us that, from the earliest eras which it 
records, there has been going on this universal carnage. 
Throughout all past time there has been a perpetual prey- 
ing of the superior upon the inferior — a ceaseless devouring 
of the weak by the strong. In almost every species, the 
number of individuals annually born is such that the ma- 
jority die of starvation or by violence before arriving at 
maturity. But this is not all. Not only do the superior 
animals prey upon the inferior, for which there may be 
suggested some compensating benefit by the sustentation 
of a higher order of life through the death of the lower, or 
by leaving the most perfect members of a species to con- 
tinue that species, but the inferior prey upon the superior, 
and organisms that are incapable of feeling have appliances 
for securing their prosperity at the expense of misery to 
organisms capable of happiness. Of the animal kingdom, 
as a whole, more than half, it is said, are parasites, and 
almost every known animal has its peculiar species. Pass- 
ing over the evils thus inflicted on animals of inferior dig- 
nity and coming to man, we find that he is infested by 
animal and vegetable parasites of which two or three dozens 
may be distinctly enumerated ; which are endowed with 
constitutions fitting them to live by absorbing the juices 
of the human body, furnished with appliances by which 
they root themselves in the human system, and made pro- 



MANIFESTATIONS OF DIVINE POWER. 147 

lific in an almost incredible degree. They produce great 
suffering, sometimes cause insanity, and not infrequently 
death.* 

The dilemma that is supposed to be created by these 
facts for those who believe in the doctrine of special crea- 
tions is this ; If any animals are special creations, all are 
so ; and each animal must be supposed to have been created 
for the special purposes that are apparent upon an exami- 
nation of its structure and mode of life. As the superior 
are constantly preying upon the inferior, and as there are 
numerous inferior animals that are constantly inflicting evil 
upon the superior, it results that malevolence rather than 
benevolence was a characteristic attribute of the creating 
power, or else that the power which is supposed to have 
created was unable to make the perfect creation which the 
hypothesis of infinite benevolence calls for. Infinite good- 
ness fails to be demonstrated by a world that is full of 
misery, caused by special appliances to bring it about ; and 
infinite power can not have existed, unless it comprehended 
the power to produce perfect and universal happiness. 

I pass entirely aside from the argument which is drawn 
from the supposed manifestations of Almighty power in the 
creation of diversified forms of animal and vegetable life, 
because that argument leads doubtless to the inquiry wheth- 
er the Almighty made these manifestations to demonstrate 
his power to himself, or made them to demonstrate it to 
his human creatures. Admitting the fact, as Mr. Spencer 
puts it, that millions of these demonstrations took place on 
earth when there were no intelligent beings to contemplate 
them — a statement that is said to be verified by the deduc- 
tions of geology and paleontology — an inquiry into the 
period or the purpose of these manifestations of divine 

* This is given almost verbatim from Mr. Spencer's - Biology," i, p. 
840 et seq. 



148 CREATIOjS- or EVOLUTION? 

power as manifestations only, merely leads us into some of 
the arguments of the current theology. There is another 
realm of thought and reasoning into which it will be far 
more profitable to enter. It is that realm which lies out- 
side of tradition and the teachings of theologians, and 
which takes the hypothesis of infinite power and infinite 
goodness, not as something which we haye been taught to 
belieye, but as a postulate of philosophical reasoning ; and, 
applying this hypothesis to the known facts of the animal 
and vegetable world, endeavors to ascertain whether these 
facts necessarily create an msuperable difificulty in the hy- 
pothesis which lies at the basis of all sound reasoning on 
the subject. For I must again insist, and shall endeavor 
specifically to show, that this hypothesis of infinite power 
and goodness is equally necessary to the evolutionist and 
to the believer in special creations, unless all speculation 
on the genesis of the world is to end in blind chance, and 
the negation of a personal creating power of any kind. 

What, then, is the true philosophical mode of dealing 
with the existence in the world of physical and moral evil, 
in reference to the hypothesis of infinite power and infinite 
goodness ? I do not ask what is a perfect demonstration 
of the problem of physical and moral evil — although I 
think that the natural solution is very near to demonstra- 
tion ; but the inquiry which I now make is, What is the 
reasonable mode of comparing the existence of suffering, 
pain, misery, and their immediate agencies, with the sup- 
position of an all-wise, all-powerful, and perfectly benefi- 
cent Creator ? * 

* In treating of the existence of physical and moral evil, I do not mean 
to include sin in the discussion. I mean now by moral evil that loss or 
diminution of happiness, for the individual or a race, which results from 
physical evil produced by causes for which the sufferer is not responsible. 
The sin that is in the world is a matter that is to be considered entirely 
with reference to the accountability of man as a moral being; and the 



SUM TOTAL OF EVIL AND HAPPINESS. 149 

"What we have to do, in the first place, is to contemplate 
the scope of infinite goodness ; or, in other words, to con- 
sider that infinite benevolence is, in its very nature, guided 
by unerring wisdom, and consequently that its methods, 
its plans, and its results are as far beyond the methods, 
plans, and results which our imperfect benevolence would 
adopt or achieve, as infinite power is beyond our finite and 
imperfect capacity. This does not call upon us to conceive 
of something that is inconceivable, or that can not be rep- 
resented in thought ; for power and goodness are qualities 
that we know to exist : we know that they exist in degrees ; 
and that what exists in a measurable and limited degree 
may exist without measurable limitation, or in absolute 
perfection. The philosophic mode of regarding perfect 
goodness requires us to consider its methods and results 
with reference to its perfect character, and not to measure 
them by the inferior standards of human wisdom. Follow- 
ing out this obvious truth, we have next to inquire whether 
the physical and moral evil which we see ought to destroy 
the very idea of an infinitely benevolent Creator, and to 
compel us to regard him as a malevolent being, or else to 
destroy our belief in his infinite power, because his power 
has been unable to make a world of perfect happiness and 
enjoyment for his creatures. If this dilemma seriously 
exists, it is just as great a difficulty for the hypothesis of 
evolution as it is for that of special creations, and it drives 
both schools into the utter negation of any intelligent 
causing power adequate to produce what we see. 

In the next place, let us see what is the sum total of 
the physical and moral evil in the animal kingdom, which, 
in reference to the sum total of happiness, is supposed to 



reasons which may be assigned for its permission may be quite distinct 
from those which relate to the existence of physical sufFering for which 
man is not responsible upon any rational theory of moral accountability. 



150 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

create this formidable impeachment of the Almighty benev- 
olence on the one hand, or of the Almighty power on the 
other. As to the order of things which permits the supe- 
rior animals to prey upon the inferior, there is an explana- 
tion which lies on the surface of the facts, and which 
would seem to satisfy all the requirements of philosophic 
reasoning, whatever may be the mode in which this part 
of the moral problem is dealt with by theologians. We 
find the fact to be that, as we rise higher and higher in 
the scale of organized beings, the superior are capable of 
happiness in a greater degree than the inferior, in some 
proportion to the superiority of their organization. The 
comparative duration of life among the different animals 
also enters into the estimate of the sum total of happiness. 
As a general rule, the inferior organizations are individu- 
ally more short-lived than the superior. Now, it might 
have pleased the Creator to cause all animals to be fed 
by manna from heaven, or to find their sustenance only 
in vegetable products ; and he could thus have dispensed 
with the carnivorous appetite, and have rendered it unne- 
cessary for the superior to prey upon and destroy the infe- 
rior. But, although he could thus have made a world from 
which the misery of this perpetual carnage would have 
been absent, and which would have been so far a world of 
perfect happiness, the fact is that this law of universal de- 
struction is so shaped as to follow the increasing capacity 
for happiness and enjoyment which moves through the as- 
cending scale of the organized beings. It also follows an- 
other obvious purpose of the carnivorous appetite and of 
the permission to indulge it. A large part of the whole 
animal kingdom is so constructed that sustentation requires 
animal food. The blood, the tissaes, the whole substance 
of some animal structures require to be renewed by similar 
substances ; and although life may sometimes be continued 
by the assimilation of vegetable substances alone, it is not 



PARASITES. 151 

the life for which the animal was formed, because it is not 
always the life which makes the full end of its being, and 
realizes its best capacity for enjoyment and for the contin- 
uation of its species. In some cases, the carnivorous appe- 
tite is withheld. The animal lives and thrives best upon a 
vegetable diet, and so far as the flesh of these animals en- 
ters into the wholesome and beneficial food of man, the 
animal fulfills one purpose of its existence. Some animals, 
before they become fit food for man, have been nourished 
by the substance of still other animals. In all this variety 
of modes in which animal food is prepared for man, and in 
the whole of the stupendous economy by which the supe- 
rior organizations prey upon the inferior in order that each 
species may continue itself and may fulfill the purposes of 
its existence, we may without any difficulty trace an obvious 
reason for the permission that has been given to such destruc- 
tion of individual life. When to the sum total of happiness 
and benefit which this permission bestows on each of the 
orders of the inferior animals according to its capacity for 
enjoyment, whether it does or does not enter into the food 
of man, whether it comes or never comes within the reach 
of his arm, we add the sum total of happiness and benefit 
which this law of universal destruction bestows on man, so 
far as he avails himself of it, we shall find no reason to im- 
peach the Divine Goodness or to adopt a conclusion deroga- 
tory to the Infinite Power. We may dismiss the difficulty 
that is supposed to arise from the warfare of the superior 
upon the inferior beings, because that warfare, when we 
trace it through all its stages, involves no sort of deduction 
from the perfect character of the Divine Goodness or the 
Divine Power. 

Next, we come to the liability of animals, man included, 
to be preyed upon by parasites, creatures of a very inferior 
order when compared to the animals which they infest. I 
have looked in vain through Mr. Spencer's speculations for 



152 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

any explanation which makes the existence of the parasitic 
animals a support to the theory of evolution without in- 
volving the same impeachment of the Divine Power or 
the Divine Goodness which is supposed to be involved in the 
hypothesis of special creations. We are indeed told that 
evolution brings about an increasing amount of happiness, 
all evils being but incidental ; that, applying alike to the 
lowest and to the highest forms of organization, there is 
in all cases a progressive adaptation, and a survival of the 
fittest. *'If," it is argued, **in the uniform working of 
the process, there are evolved organisms of low types, which 
prey on those of higher types, the evils inflicted form but a 
deduction from the average benefits. The universal and 
necessary tendency toward supremacy and multiplication of 
the best, applying to the organic creation as a whole as well 
as to each species, is ever diminishing the damage done, 
tends ever to maintain those most superior organizations 
which, in one way or another, escape the invasions of the 
inferior, and so tends to produce a type less liable to the 
invasions of the inferior. Thus the evils accompanying 
evolution are ever being self-eliminated." * 

Admitting, for the argument's sake, that this is true, 
how does the hypothesis of evolution meet the difficulty ? 
The parasitic inferior organizations exist, and they have 
existed, more or less, as long as we have known anything 
of the superior organizations on which they prey. They 
have inflicted and still inflict an incalculable amount of 
evil, an untold diminution of the happiness that might 
have been enjoyed if they had never existed. The mode in 
which they came into existence, whether by the process of 
evolution or by special creations of their respective forms, 
does not affect the amount of evil which their ravages have 
produced and are still producing. If they exist under an 

*"Biology,"i, p. 354. 



ELIMmATION OF EVIL. 153 

order of things which has made them the products of an 
evolving process that has formed them out of still lower 
types, while they exist they have the same power of inflict- 
ing evil as if they had been specially made in their respect- 
ive types without the former existence of any other type. 
If they owe their existence to the process of evolution, they 
exist under a system that was designed to lead to their 
production by the operation of uniform laws working out 
a uniform process ; and under this process, so long as they 
are produced by it, they imply gratuitous malevolence, just 
as truly as they do if they are supposed to have been spe- 
cially created. The evils which they have inflicted and still 
inflict were deliberately inflicted, unless we suppose that the 
hypothetical process of evolution was not a system ordained 
by any supreme and superhuman power, but was a result of 
blind chance ; that the system was not created, but, without 
the volition of any power whatever, grew out of nothing. 

The compensating tendency of the evolution system to 
evolve superior organisms, which in one way or other '* will 
escape the parasitic invasions," by becoming less liable to 
them, and so to diminish the damage done, as a sum total, 
finds a corresponding result in the system of special crea- 
tions by a different process and at a more rapid rate. For 
the hypothesis of special creations, rightly regarded, does 
not assume the special creation of each individual animal 
as a miraculous or semi-miraculous interposition of divine 
power ; and even when we apply it to the lowest types of 
animals it implies only the formation of that type with the 
power in most cases of continuing its species. Assuming 
the parasitic animals to be in this sense special creations, 
the superior organisms on which they prey during their 
existence may become less liable to their invasions by an 
infinity of causes which will diminish and finally put an 
end to the parasitic ravages. In the progress of medical sci- 
ence man may be wholly relieved from the worst and most 



154: CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

obscure parasites that have ever infested him, without wait- 
ing for their evolution into some other type of animal that 
does not desire or need to prey upon the human system, or 
without waiting to have the human organism developed 
into one that will not be exposed to such causes of suffering 
or death. We know already that very simple precautions 
will ward off from man some of the most subtle of these 
enemies ; and even in the case of animals lower than man 
we know that instinct teaches them how to avoid the rav- 
ages of some of the parasites to which they are exposed, even 
if there are others which they can not now escape. 

So that, viewing as a whole the amount of misery in- 
flicted by the inferior organisms upon the superior, and look- 
ing from the first forward to the last '^syllable of recorded 
time," we are able upon either of the two hypotheses re- 
specting the origin of animals to reach certain definite con- 
clusions, which may be stated as follows : This world was 
not intended to be a state of unmixed and unbroken indi- 
vidual happiness for any of the animal organisms. Death 
for every individual in some form was necessary to the car- 
rying on and the carrying out of the scheme of average en- 
joyment and the accomplishment of a sum total of benefit 
that becomes larger and larger as time goes on ; and, al- 
though death without suffering might have been ordained, 
the moral purpose for which suffering was allowed to pre- 
cede death required that it should be permitted in num- 
berless cases and forms, and by almost numberless agencies, 
although not always made necessary. This great purpose 
can be discerned without taking into view at all the idea of 
a future state of existence for man or any of the other ter- 
restrial beings, and looking only at the moral development 
of man individually and collectively as an agent in the pro- 
motion of happiness on this earth. Man, however he origi- 
nated, stands at the head of the whole animal kingdom. 
If for himself and for all the inferior animal organisms 



BENEFITS OF SUFFERING. 155 

death without suffering had been ordained as the universal 
rule, he would have been without the full strength of the 
moral stimulus which now leads him to relieve, to palliate, 
to diminish, and, as far as possible, to terminate every kind 
of suffering for himself and the superior organisms that are 
below him in the scale, which are the most capable of en- 
joyment and happiness, next after himself, in their various 
proportionate capacities. He would have had no strong 
motive for exterminating the inferior and noxious organ- 
isms excepting for his own individual and immediate bene- 
fit ; no reason for extending the protection of his scientific 
acquirements to the lower animals excepting to promote his 
own immediate advantage. Human society would have 
been without that approach to moral perfection which is 
indicated by a tenderness for life in all its forms, where its 
destruction is not needed by some controlling necessity or 
expediency, and by the alleviation of suffering in all its 
forms for the sake of increasing the sum total of possible 
happiness. Human life itself would have been less sacred, 
in human estimation if there had been no suffering to draw 
forth our sympathies and to stimulate us to the utmost con- 
tention against its eyils. Civilization would have been des- 
titute of that which is now its highest and noblest attri- 
bute. "Wars would have been more frequent among the 
most advanced portions of the human race ; pestilence 
would not have been encountered with half the vigor or the 
skill which now wage battle against it ; poverty would have 
been left to take care of itself, or would have been alleviated 
from only the lowest and most selfish motives, which would 
have left half its evils to be aggravated by neglect. As the 
world has been constituted, and as we have the strongest 
reason to believe it will continue to the end, there is to be 
added to the immeasurable sum of mere animal enjoyment 
of life that other immeasurable sum of moral happiness 
which man derives from doing good and from the cultiva- 



156 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

tion of his power to do it — an acquisition and accumulation 
of benefit which would have been wanting if there had 
been no physical suffering to awaken pity and to prompt 
our exertions for its relief. 

So that the objection that the hypothesis of infinite 
goodness required a world where physical pain would have 
been unknown to any of its organisms, where human sor- 
row would never have been felt, where human tears would 
have never flowed, and where death would have been 
always and only euthanasia, is by no manner of means a 
necessary conclusion, as the existence of suffering is no im- 
peachment of the Infinite Power. If we consider man only 
in the light of his rank at the head of all the terrestrial 
beings, and as therefore capable of the greatest amount of 
benefit, to himself and to the other creatures, and if we re- 
gard him individually as nothing more than a being dwell- 
ing on this earth for a short-lived existence and endowed 
with the power of perpetuating his species, he would have 
been morally an inferior being to what he is now capable 
of becoming, and human society would have been far below 
what it can be made and what we know that to a large 
degree it already is, if j^hysical suffering had been excluded 
from the world. All this can be discerned without the aid 
of revelation ; it can be seen by the eye of philosophic rea- 
son alone ; and it is all equally true upon any hypothesis 
of the physical origin of man or any other living creature 
on this earth, unless we suppose that the whole animal 
kingdom came into being without any intentional design, 
without any plan of intentional benefit, without any pur- 
pose, and without the conscious exertion of any power of 
any kind. 

And, if the question is asked, What is to be the end of 
this world ? or if we go forward in imagination toward the 
probable end of all this animal life, I can not see that the 
hypothesis of evolution has more to recommend it than the 



FmALITY OF SPECIES. 157 

hypothesis of special creations in reference to the perfecti- 
bility of the world, or to the sum of approximate perfec- 
tion that seems to be attainable. As, upon either of the 
two hypotheses, a perfect world does not even now seem to 
have demanded an absence of suffering, since suffering tends 
obviously to produce greater benefit than could have fol- 
lowed from its absence, so, in the remotest conceivable fu- 
ture, a nearer and nearer approximation to a state of uni- 
versal happiness will continue to be worked out by physical 
and moral causes, which will be as potent under the system 
of special creations as they can be supposed to be under the 
system of evolution. It is true that the moral causes will 
supplement and aid the physical under either of the two sys- 
tems. But one difficulty with the evolution theory as the 
sole method by which the past or i)resent inhabitants of the 
world have come into existence is that, so far as we can 
judge, it has done and completed its work just as effectu- 
ally and finally as special creation appears to have termi- 
nated in certain forms, some of which are extinct and some 
of which are living. Take the Darwinian pedigree of man, 
as stated in a former chapter, or any other mode of tracing 
the supposed stages of animal evolution. The process has 
hypothetically culminated in man. At whatever species in 
the ascending scale you pause, you find that the particular 
type of animal has either become extinct or that it has con- 
tinued and still continues to be produced in that same type, 
with only such variations and incidental differences as have 
resulted from changed conditions of life, and from the in- 
termingling of different breeds of the same animal. I do 
not now speak of the theory, which admits, of course, of 
the hypothetical development of every known animal, past 
or present, out of its supposed predecessors. But I speak 
of the facts as yet revealed by the researches of naturalists 
among all the extinct and living forms of animal life. If 
there had ever been discovered any one instance in which 



158 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

it could be claimed by satisfactory proof that an animal of 
a distinct species had been evolved out of races of animals 
of a fundamentally different organization, and without the 
special interposition of any creating power operating to 
make a new organism, we should certainly have it cited 
and relied upon as a fact of the utmost importance. I do 
not say that it would be reasonable to expect direct and 
ocular demonstration of such a product, any more than it 
would be reasonable to expect direct and ocular demon- 
stration of an act of special creation. But I say that it 
could be shown by proofs that ought to be satisfactory if 
there were any evidence from which the inference that 
such a fact ever occurred could be reasonably drawn ; just 
as it is possible to draw the inference of special creation by 
reasonable deduction from the evidence that tends to estab^ 
lish it as a safe conclusion. But if there has ever been such 
an instance of the evolution of any known species of ani- 
mal out of other species shown by satisfactory proof, or if 
we assume such an occurrence in the past as the theory 
calls for, what reason have we to suppose that the process 
of evolution is still going on, and to expect it to go on to 
the end of time ? We must judge of the future by the 
past, for we have no other means of judging it. The past 
and the present both show, so far as we can yet perceive by 
the facts, that each distinct and peculiar type of animal 
life remains a perfect and completed production, however 
it was fashioned or grew into that type ; and that, so far as 
we have any means of actual knowledge, no crosses of dif- 
ferent races of that animal produce anything but incidental 
variations of structure and mode of life. It is a mere hy- 
pothesis that they produce distinct species. 

Apply this to the most important of the supposed con- 
nections between different animals according to the theory 
of evolution — that between man and the monkey. The 
theory calls for the intermediate link or links. Nothing 



FmALITY OF SPECIES. 159 

can be yet found that shows the pedigree without eking it 
out by general reasoning, and by assumptions that are more 
or less imaginary. But suppose that the chain of proof 
were complete, what would it show ? It would show that 
the process of eyolution has culminated in man, as its 
crown and summit, and has there stopped. For, whateyer 
may have been the length of time required for the produc- 
tion of this result, we know what the product is. We have 
the history of man as an animal for a period of time that has 
been qnite long enough to show that, after he had become 
in his essential structure as an animal what we know him 
to be, no subsequent intermingling of the races or families 
into which the species became divided has produced any 
change in his essential structure, or any new organs or any 
differences but differences in the development of powers 
which are to be found in him at all the stages of his known 
existence as parts of his characteristic animal structure. 
The period of his known existence is certainly infinitely 
small when compared with the whole indefinite future, /it 
is long enough, however, to afford some basis of reasoning 
about the future ; and, short as it is, it tends very strongly 
to show that the further development of man on earth is 
to be chiefly a moral and intellectual development ; that 
in physical structure he is a completed type ; and that what- 
ever superiorities of mere animal life he may attain to here- 
after are to be such improvements as can be worked out, 
within the limits of his animal constitution, by the science 
which his accumulating experience and knowledge will en- 
able him to apply to the physical and moral well-being of 
his race. ) 

To return now to the line of thought from which these 
suggestions have diverged. If, as we have every reason to 
believe upon either hypothesis of man's origin, he is a com- 
pleted animal, standing by original creation or by the effect 
of the evolution process at the head of the whole animal 



160 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

kingdom iu the apparent purpose of his existence, his 
agency and his power in promoting the sum of happiness 
on earth, for himself and all the other animals, are the 
same upon either hypothesis of his origin. The hypothesis 
of his origin by evolution gives him no greater power over 
his own happiness or that of the other creatures than he 
has if we suppose him to have been specially created ; and 
it is only by adopting the belief that in his own constitu- 
tion he is to be hereafter developed into a being incapable 
of suffering, or one vastly less capable of suffering than the 
animal called man now is, that the theory of evolution, 
even in regard to the sum total of happiness on earth, has 
any advantage over the theory of special creations. If we 
suppose the future gradual development of a terrestrial 
being standing still higher in the animal scale than man 
now stands, exempt from the suffering which man now 
suffers, we have a great amount of suffering hereafter 
eliminated from the world by a certain process. But how 
does this better satisfy the idea of infinite goodness in the 
power that devised the process, than the hypothesis of 
special creation which has formed man as an ultimate prod- 
uct of the divine benevolence and power acting together, 
endowed him with the faculty of eliminating pain and evil 
from the circumstances of his existence, by his own exer- 
tions, and furnished him with the strongest motives as well 
as with almost immeasurable means for diminishing the 
amount of evil for himself and all the other beings within 
his reach ? 

5. Another of the specific objections urged by Mr. Spen- 
cer against the doctrine of special creations is so put that 
it is manifestly directed against one of the positions as- 
sumed by the representatives of the current theology. The 
learned philosopher begins this part of his argument by 
imputing to those who assert this doctrine as their reason 
for maintaining it, that it "honors the Unknown Cause of 



HONORING OR DISHONORING THE CREATOR. 161 

things," and that they think any other doctrine amounts 
to an exclusion of divine power from the world. To en- 
counter this supposed reason for maintaining the doctrine 
of special creations, he proceeds to ask whether the divine 
power "would not have been still better demonstrated by 
the separate creation of each individual than it is by the 
separate creation of each species ? Why should there exist 
this process of natural generation ? "Why should not om- 
nipotence have been proved by the supernatural production 
of plants and animals everywhere throughout the world 
from hour to hour ? Is it replied that the Creator was able 
to make individuals arise from one another in natural selec- 
tion, but not to make species thus arise ? This is to assign 
a limit to power instead of magnifying it. Is it replied 
that the occasional miraculous origination of a species was 
practicable, but that the perpetual miraculous origination 
of countless individuals was impracticable ? This also is a 
derogation. Either it was possible or not possible to create 
species and individuals after the same general methods. 
To say that it was not possible is suicidal in those who use 
this argument ; and, if it was possible, it is required to say 
what end is served by the special creation of species that 
would not be better served by the special creation of indi- 
viduals ? " * I must again disclaim any participation in the 
views of those who contemplate this question with reference 
to the manifestations of divine power by one method of its 
supposed action or another, or who are influenced by the 
idea of honoring or dishonoring the Creator. This is not 
a question of the mode in which the Creator has chosen to 
manifest his power for the purpose of making it more im- 
pressive in the eyes of his intelligent human creatures 
or more palpable to their perceptions. Nor is it a ques- 
tion, excepting for the theologian who begins to reason 

* "Biology," i, p. 339. 



162 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

upon it from a peculiar point of view, by what belief we 
best honor the Creator, or the power which Mr. Spencer 
describes as the '* Unknown Cause." In the eye of philo- 
sophic reason, apart from all the religious dogmas that 
have been taught by human interpretations of revelation, 
this is a question of the probable mode in which the assumed 
omnipotent power has acted ; and it is not a question of 
how we can best honor or magnify that power by believing 
that it has acted in one mode and not in another. We 
have to take, first, the postulate of an infinitely powerful 
Creator, whose existence is an independent inquiry, which 
we are to make out upon evidence that satisfies the mind. 
The hypothesis of his existence and attributes includes the 
power to create species and to establish the process of natu- 
ral generation for the continuation of each species, or the 
power to make se^^arate creations of each individual, as Mr. 
Spencer phrases it, "from hour to hour." In either mode 
of action, the power was the same. It is no derogation 
from it to suppose that the one or the other mode was 
adopted. It is no augmentation of it to suppose that the 
one was adopted instead of the other. It is simply a ques- 
tion of what does the evidence show, to the reasonable sat- 
isfaction of the human mind, to have been most probably 
the method that was chosen by a power that could adopt 
any method whatever. If we find that the creation of 
species and the establishment of the process of natural 
generation for the multiplication of individuals is upon the 
whole sustained by a predominating weight of evidence, it 
is safe to adopt the belief that this hypothesis of the Al- 
mighty method is in accordance with the facts. If the evi- 
dence fails to show that species have arisen from each other 
in the same way that individuals have arisen from each 
other in natural succession, we have no reason to conclude 
that such has been the fact. On the other hand, if the 
evidence shows, by reasonably satisfactory proofs, that a 



EFFECTS OF BELIEF IN SPECIAL CREATIONS. 163 

process has been established for the eYolution of distinct 
species out of other and different species, similar to the 
process by which individuals arise from each other by nat- 
ural generation, it will be safe to conclude that such has 
been the fact. Upon either hypothesis, the power of the 
Creator remains the same. 

Nor is it in any degree necessary to consider in what 
sense the one method of action or the other was " miracu- 
lous," or that the one was an occasional and the other a 
perpetual exercise of power. The special creations of in- 
dividuals from hour to hour would be just as miraculous as 
the special creation of species, and it would be occasional, 
although the occasions would be indefinite in number. The 
special creation of species would be just as miraculous as 
the special creation of individuals, but the occasional exer- 
cise of such a power would be limited by the number of 
species, each of which would be a finality in itself. The 
dilemma that is suggested by Mr. Spencer is a dilemma 
only for those who think it necessary to mingle the idea of 
honoring or dishonoring the Creator by one or another 
mode of interpreting his works, with a question of his 
probable method of action. His method of action is to be 
judged upon the evidence which a study of his works dis- 
closes. 

6. Mr. Spencer, in summing up his objections to the 
doctrine of special creations, has said that it not only "fails 
to satisfy men's intellectual need of an interpretation," but 
that it also "fails to satisfy their moral sentiment" ; that 
" their moral sentiment is much better satisfied by the doc- 
trine of evolution, since that doctrine raises no contradic- 
tory implications respecting the Unknown Cause, such as 
are raised by the antagonist doctrine." * I have already sug- 
gested what seems to me a sufficient answer to the supposed 

* "Biology," i, pp. 344, 855. 



164 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

contradictory implications respecting the goodness and 
power of the Almighty Creator. [But it is here worthy of 
the further inquiry, What has heen the influence upon the 
sacredness of human life, in human estimation, of a belief 
in any other theory of man's origin, or of no belief on the 
subject, compared with the effect of a belief in the doctrine 
that he is a creature of an Almighty Creator, formed by an 
exercise of infinite power for the enjoyment of greater hap- 
piness on earth than any other creature, and therefore hav- 
ing a peculiarly sacred individual right to the life that has 
been given to him ? This, to be sure, does not afford a 
direct test of the probable truth of the hypothesis respect- 
ing his origin. But the answer to this inquiry will afford 
some test of the claim upon our consideration that may be 
put forward for any other hypothesis than the one that em- 
braces the full idea of man's special creation, even if we do 
not look beyond this world. Compare, then, the civiliza- 
tion of the Eomans at the period when it was at its highest 
development (the age of Julius and Augustus Caesar), when 
in many respects it was a splendid civilization. iTeither 
among the vulgar, nor among the most cultivated; not 
among the most accomplished of the statesmen or philoso- 
phers, was there any such belief as the simple belief in the 
relation between Creator and creature, such as had been 
held by a people who were regarded by the Romans as bar- 
barians, in respect to man and all the other animals ; or 
such a belief as is now held by the least educated peasant 
of modern Europe. One consequence of the absence of this 
belief, or of the want of a vivid perception of it, was that 
the highest persons in the Eoman state, men possessed of 
all the culture and refinement of their age, not only fur- 
nished for the popular amusement combats of wild beasts of 
the most ferocious natures, but they provided gladiatorial 
shows in which human beings^ trained for the purpose, were 
by each other '^ butchered to make a Roman holiday." The 



EFI'EOTS of belief m special CEEATIONS. 165 

statesmen who thus catered to the popular tastes, and never 
thought of correcting them, subjected themselves to enor- 
mous expenses for the purpose ; and all that was noble and 
dignified and cultured of both sexes, as well as the rabble, 
looked on with delight at the horrid spectacle. But this 
was not all. The Eoman law, in many ways a code of ad- 
mirable ethics, in utter disregard of the natural rights of 
men, left the life of the slave within the absolute power of 
the master, without any mitigation of the existing law of 
nations which made slaves of the captive in war and his 
posterity. Compare all this with the civilization of any 
modern country in which the life or liberty of man can be 
taken away only by judicial process and public authority, 
for actual crime ; in which institutions exist for the relief 
of human suffering and for the prevention of cruelty to the 
inferior creatures ; and then say whether the belief in spe- 
cial creations is not a doctrine that has worked vast good 
in the world, and one that should not be scouted because 
it is a "primitive belief."/^ 

/Again, compare the ages in modern Europe when states- 
men and politicians of the highest standing with entire 
impunity employed assassination for political ends, with 
periods in the same countries when assassination had come 
to be regarded not only with abhorrence, but as incapable 
of justification for any end whatever, public or private, and 
then say whether the world can lose its belief that man is 
a special creation of God, without losing one of the strong- 
est safeguards of human life that can be derived from any 
belief on the subject. All these, and a great many similar 
considerations, while they do not prove the hypothesis of 
special creation, show strongly that, unlike some of the 
family of beliefs with which it was associated in the darkest 
ages, this one has worked no mischiefs ; that, on the con- 
trary, it has been producing moral, social, and political 
benefits in all the ages in which it has been most vividly 



166 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

present to the popular faith. The command, " Thon shalt 
do no murder," from whatever source it came, whether it 
was delivered to Moses on the mount of fire, or came from 
the teachings of Nature and the dictates of social expedi- 
ency, whether it is a divine or a human law, or both, has 
unhappily been broken in all times, in all lands, and in 
all conditions of civilization. It is broken still. But it 
has never yet ceased, for its moral foundation and for the 
moral sanction of all the methods which have aimed to en- 
force it, to rest on the belief that man is peculiarly the 
child of God, whose life is sacred beyond the life of all 
other creatures. Whether any other belief of man's origin 
will afford an equally good foundation for that law, is a 
question which modern scientific speculation may or may 
not be able to answer. If its speculations conduct to the 
conclusion that the "unknown cause" has not specially 
caused anything, has not established any relation of Creator 
and creature, that is sufficiently special to imply divine 
care for the creature, we know what the answer must be. 
The theologian is not the only person who has occasion to 
examine the doctrine of evolution ; it must be examined by 
the statesman as well. / 



CHAPTEE V. 

The doctrine of evolution according to Herbert Spencer further considered. 

Iiq" the last preceding chapter, I have examined Mr. 
Spencer's chief objection to the doctrine of special creations 
when considered in its general aspects. I now advance to 
the general aspects of the evolution hypothesis as applied 
by this philosopher to the animal kingdom. I have already 
suggested the appropriate answer to the claim that the 
derivation of the evolution hypothesis is favorable because 
it has originated " among the most instructed class and in 
these better-instructed times," and that the derivation of 
the other hypothesis is unfavorable because " it originated 
in times of profound ignorance." On this point it is un- 
necessary to say more. But there is a supposed *' kindred 
antithesis" between " the two families of beliefs" to which 
these two hypotheses are said respectively to belong ; one of 
which families "has been dying out," while the other 
family "has been multiplying." This brings into view the 
peculiar philosophical system of Mr. Spencer, by which he 
maintains "the unity of Nature," or the prevalence of a 
universal law of evolution, as the law which is to be discerned 
in remote fields of inquiry, and which "will presently be 
recognized as the law of the phenomena which we are here 
considering," namely, the phenomena of animal life. 
"The discovery that evolution has gone on, and is going 
on, in so many departments of Nature, becomes a reason 



168 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

for believing that there is no department of Nature in which 
it does not go on." * 

In considering this mode of generalization it is impor- 
tant to distinguish between the phenomena that are ob- 
servable in those departments of Nature which include only 
dead or inanimate matter, and the phenomena that are 
peculiar to matter organized into living beings. Again : it 
is important to distinguish between phenomena which have 
been influenced by human agencies and those which can 
not have been affected by the power of man. Another dis- 
tinction of the greatest consequence is that which divides 
the phenomena in question according to their relation to a 
moral purpose. In one class of phenomena, a moral pur- 
pose may be plainly discovered as the purpose of an intelli- 
gent causing power, which has chosen a particular means 
for the accomplishment of an end. In another class of 
phenomena, a moral purpose may not be discoverable as 
the end for which the existing arrangement of things was 
specially designed, and to which that arrangement was an 
indispensable means. By classifying the departments of 
Nature and observing their phenomena with these discrimi- 
nations, we shall be able to judge of the value of Mr. 
Spencer's philosophical system when applied to the animal 
kingdom. 

In grouping the departments and their respective phe- 
nomena as departments in which the law of evolution has 
obtained, and in drawing from them the sweeping deduction 
that there is no department in which this law has not ob- 
tained as the causa causans, Mr. Spencer does not appear 
to have made these necessary discriminations. He specifies 
the following remote fields of inquiry, in which he main- 
tains that this law of evolution is now admitted to be the 
solution of the phenomena that lie in those respective fields : 

* " Biplogy," i, pp. 346-348 et seg. 



/ 



IS EVOLUTIOIT THE UNIVERSAL LAW? 169 



First, the solar system, which, as he asserts, astronomers 
now consider has been gradually evolved out of diffused 
matter.* Second, geological discoveries, which show that 
the earth has reached its present varied structure through 
a process of evolution. Third, society, which has pro- 
gressed through a corresponding process of gradual develop- 
ment. *' Constitutions are not made, but grow," is said to 
be now a recognized truth among "philosophical politi- 
cians," and a part of the more general truth that "societies 
are not made, but grow." Fourth, languages, which, we 
are told, are now believed not to have been artificially or 
supernaturally formed, but to have been developed. Fi- 
nally, the histories of religions, philosophy, science, the fine 
arts, and the industrial arts, show, it is said, development 
"through as unobtrusive changes as those which the mind 
of a child passes on its way to maturity." f j 

It is obvious that in some of these departments neither 
human agency nor the human will and choice can have had 
any influence in producing the phenomena, while in some 
of them human agency, will, and choice have had a vast 
influence in making the phenomena what they are. That 
political constitutions or social institutions are not made, 
but grow, is a dogma that is by no means universally true, 
however wise it may sound, or with whatever confidence in 
a paradox it may be asserted by " some political philoso- 
phers." While past events and present exigencies may 
have largely shaped some political constitutions, we know 
that others have been deliberately modified by a choice that 
has had more or less of a free scope, and that sometimes this 
has amounted to an arbitrary decision. Languages may or 
may not have been a direct and supernatural gift from Heav- 
en, but we know that their structure has been powerfully 

* Concerning the nebular hypothesis, and what astronomers now con- 
sider, see post f *' Biology," i. 



170 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

influenced by human agencies, wlien they have come to be 
written expressions of thought ; for they have then received 
expansion by the actual coinage of new words, as well as by 
new meanings of old words ; and even when they were in the 
first stages of a spoken tongue, inflections that were purely 
arbitrary have been introduced. So it has been with systems 
of religion, philosophy, the fine arts, the mechanic arts, 
legislation, and jurisprudence. While in all these depart- 
ments changes have been going on, which upon a super- 
ficial view appear to indicate a kind of spontaneous devel- 
opment, when they are analyzed they are seen to have been 
wholly caused, or more or less influenced, by the genius, 
the thought, the discoveries, the exertions, and the acts of 
particular individuals who have had the force to impress 
themselves upon the age, and thus to make new systems, 
new beliefs, new products, new rules of social or political 
life, new tastes, and new habits of thinking and acting. 

Again : in some of the various orders of phenomena 
which are found in these different departments, there is 
discernible a distinct moral purpose in the shape which 
they have been made to assume, and in others of them 
there is no moral purpose discoverable, which we can say 
required the employment of the particular means to effect 
the end. Thus, astronomers can not assign a moral pur- 
pose for which the distribution of the fixed stars was made 
to be what it is, and which purpose could not have been 
answered by some other arrangement. At the same time, 
it is easy to see that the solar system was arranged with ref- 
erence to the law of universal gravitation, which made this 
arrangement of the different bodies essential to the harmo- 
nious working of a great and complex piece of mechanism. 
The present formation of the earth may have resulted just 
as geologists think it has, and yet they can not say that 
there was no moral purpose in the division of the exterior 
surface of otir globe into land and water, seas, continents, 



NECESSARY DISCRIMINATIONS. 171 

mountains, etc. These are departments of l^^tare in which 
man has had no influence in producing the phenomena. 
When we turn to those departments in which man is placed 
as an actor, we often find an adjustment of means to an 
end that is so comprehensive, as well as so plain, that we 
may justly conclude it to have been chosen by the creating 
power, with the express intent that human agency should 
be the means by which certain effects are to be produced. 
For example : man is eminently a social animal. Human 
society is a result of his strong social propensities. He is 
placed in it as an actor ; and in this arrangement there is 
discoverable a moral purpose so plain that we may right- 
fully regard the social phenomena of mutual protection 
and improvement as proofs that society was ordained as the 
sphere of man's highest development on earth. 

So that, in, reasoning about the phenomena of any of the 
departments of Nature as affording indications of the so- 
called universal law of evolution, we must not forget the 
distinction between organized inanimate and organized ani- 
mated matter ; or the distinction between those depart- 
ments in which human will or choice, or the human intel- 
lect, has had no influence in shaping the phenomena, and 
those in which they have had great influence ; or the dis- 
tinction between phenomena in which a special moral pur- 
pose can be and those in which it can not be discovered, as 
the reason for the existing order of things. It is especially 
hazardous to argue that because a spontaneous develop- 
ment, or a gradual evolution, can be traced in some of the 
phenomena of inanimate matter, it therefore must obtain 
in the animal kingdom. It is alike hazardous to argue, 
because there has been what is called evolution in some 
departments of Nature over which man has had no control, 
that the same law obtains in other departments over which 
he has also had no control, or those in which he has had a 
large control. 



172 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

The bearing of these discriminations upon the supposed 
universality of the law of evolution may now be seen if we 
attend to the further inquiry whether that law obtains 
throughout all the phenomena of any one department of 
Nature as the sole cause of the phenomena in that depart- 
ment. Take again, for example, the solar system. Sup- 
pose it to be true that the bodies which compose it, the sun 
and the planetary spheres, were gradually evolved out of 
diffused matter. Does it necessarily follow that their exist- 
ing arrangements and mutual relations were not specially 
designed ? That their orbits, their revolutions, their dis- 
tances from each other, were not specially planned ? That 
they were not hung in their respective positions with an 
intentional adjustment to the great force of gravitation 
that was prevailing throughout the universe ? Must we 
suppose that all this part of the whole phenomena of the 
solar system resulted from the operation of an ungoverned 
evolution, because the bodies themselves may have been 
gradually formed out of diffused matter into their present 
condition without being spoken at once into that condition 
by the fiat of the Almighty ? We can certainly see that 
the existing arrangements must have been intentional ; and, 
if intentional, the intention must have taken effect in the 
production of the phenomena exhibited by the arrange- 
ment, as any design takes effect in the production of the 
phenomena which are open to our observation. The moral 
purpose evinced by one part of this arrangement, the alter- 
nation of day and night upon the earth, for example, might 
have been effected by some other means than the means 
which now produce it. But there is the strongest evidence 
that a certain means was chosen and intentionally put into 
operation ; and although we can not tell why that means 
was preferred, the fact that it was both designed and pre- 
ferred makes it a special creation. To suppose that it was 
left to be worked out by a process such as the hypothesis 



EVOLUTION NOT A UNIVERSAL LAW. 173 

of evolution assumes, by the gradual, fortuitous, and un- 
goyerned operation of infinitely slow-moving causes, which 
might have made the adjustments very different from what 
they are, is to deprive it of the element of intentional 
preference that is proved by its existence. The hypothesis 
of evolution, when applied to all the phenomena of the 
solar system, relegates one great branch of those phenomena 
to a realm from which all special purposes and all direct 
design are absent, and confines the explanation of the phe- 
nomena to the operation of causes that might have brought 
about very different arrangements. That this supposed 
process of evolution has, in fact, been followed by the ex- 
isting arrangements of the solar system, does not prove, or 
tend to prove, that the existing arrangements are solely 
due to the supposed method of their production ; for we 
can not leave out the element of some design, and if there 
was a design, the very nature of the system required that 
the design should be executed by a special creation of a 
plan for the mutual relations of the bodies composing it. 
The bodies themselves might have been gradually formed 
out of diffused matter, floating loosely in the realms of 
space. The relations of the bodies to each other required 
the act of an intelligent will, in the direct formation of an 
intentional plan ; and that act was an act of special crea- 
tion in the same sense in which the structural plan of a 
species of animal was a special creation. 

Here, then, is one department of Nature in which it is 
not necessary and not philosophical to assume that the law 
of so-called evolution has been the universal law to which 
all the phenomena of that department are to be attributed. 
If we follow out the same inquiry in other departments of 
Nature remote from the animal kingdom, we shall find 
reason to adopt the same conclusion in respect to their 
phenomena. Thus, let us for a moment contemplate an- 
other of the departments in which inanimate matter is the 



174 CREATION" OE EVOLUTION? 

subject of observation, and in which human will or intelli- 
gence has had no agency in producing the phenomena, 
namely, the formation of the present structure of the 
earth as it is described by geologists. This is a depart- 
ment in which the hypothesis of evolution finds perhaps 
its stronghold. Yet it is necessary even here to recognize 
an intentional plan and direct design in some part of the 
phenomena. Let us suppose that during the period re- 
quired by any of the speculations of geologists, however 
long, a mass of matter was gathered in an unformed con- 
dition, and gradually shaped into the present condition of 
the earth by the action of its constituent elements upon 
each other, influenced by the laws of mechanical forces, of 
chemical combinations, of light and heat, and of whatever 
physical agencies were made to operate in the process of 
evolving the mass into the condition in which it has been 
known to us for a certain time. Is it a rational conclusion 
that the intelligent power which put these forces in o'peTSi' 
tion — an hypothesis with which we must begin to reason, 
or leave the origin of both matter and forces to blind 
chance — did not guide their operation at all to the inten- 
tional production of the results which we see ? The results 
disclose some manifest purposes ; and although these pur- 
poses, or others equally beneficent, might have been ac- 
complished by different arrangements, we can see that 
they have been effected by a certain arrangement of a 
specific character. The results have been continents, seas, 
mountains, rivers, lakes, formation and distribution of 
minerals, growth of forests, and an almost innumerable, 
and certainly a very varied, catalogue of phenomena, physi- 
cal formations, and adaptations. All these varied results 
disclose a plan by which this earth became a marvelously 
convenient abode for the living creatures that have in- 
habited or still inhabit it, especially for man. The forma- 
tion of this plan was an intelligent act, if we suppose that 



SPENCER'S ORIGIN OF ANIMALS. 175 

any intelligent being projected the original gathering of 
the crude primordial matter and subjected it to the opera- 
tion of the forces employed to shape it into its present con- 
dition. This plan was ari act of special creation, in the 
same sense in which the plan of a particular animal organ- 
ism may have been a special creation. While, therefore, a 
process which may be called evolution may have operated 
as the agency through which the earth has reached its 
present physical condition, the plan of that condition was 
certainly not formed by any such process ; for it was, if it 
was the product of anything, the product of an intelligent 
will operating in the production of preconceived results by 
the exercise of superhuman and infinite wisdom and fore- 
sight. 

When we turn to a department in which human influ- 
ence has largely or wholly shaped the phenomena, we find 
numerous special creations that are not attributable to the 
operation of any law of development or evolution such as is 
supposed to have led to the production of one species of 
animal out of another, or out of several previous species. 
In short, a survey of all the departments of Nature leads to 
the conclusion that while there may be phenomena which 
are properly traceable to the operation of the forces of 
Nature, or to fixed general systems of production, there is 
another very large class of the phenomena which owe their 
existence to special acts of an intelligent will, finite or 
infinite, human or divine, according as their production 
required superhuman power or admitted of the efiicacy of 
man's intervention. 

The way is now somewhat cleared for an examination 
of Mr. Spencer's application of the law of evolution to the 
gradual formation of different species of animals out of one 
or more previous species, without any act of special creation 
intervening anywhere in the series. We have seen that this 
alleged law is not of universal force as the cause of all the 



176 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

phenomena in all the departments of Nature. When we 
come to apply it as the hypothesis which is to account for 
tlie existence of different species of animals of very different 
types, we must remember that we are dealing with organ- 
isms endowed with life, and, although we can not suffi- 
ciently explain what life is, we know that animated organ- 
isms are brought into being by systems of production that 
are widely different from the modes in which inanimate 
matter may have been or has been made to assume its ex- 
isting forms. Bearing this in mind, we come to the argu- 
ments and proofs by which Mr. Spencer maintains the im- 
mense superiority of the evolution hypothesis over that of 
special creations, in reference to the animal kingdom. It 
must be remembered that this is a department in which 
man can have had no agency in producing the phenomena, 
for whatever may have been the slight variations produced 
by human interference with the breeding of animals domes- 
ticated from their wild condition, we must investigate the 
origin of species as if there had never been any human in- 
tervention in the crossing of breeds, because that origin is 
to be looked for in a sphere entirely removed from all 
human interference. Man himself is included in the in- 
vestigation, and we must make that investigation in refer- 
ence to a time when he did not exist, or when he did not 
exist as we now know him. 

One of the favorite methods of Mr. Spencer consists in 
arraying difficulties for the believers in special creations, 
which, he argues, can not be encountered by their hypothe- 
sis, and then arguing that there are no difficulties in the 
way of the hypothesis of evolution. His position shall be 
stated with all the strength that he gives to it, and with 
all the care that I can bestow upon its treatment. He puts 
the argument thus : In the animal kingdom individuals 
come into being by a process of generation — that is to say, 
they arise out of other individuals of the same species. If 



SPENCER'S ARGUMENT. 177 

we contemplate the individuals of any species, we find an 
evolution repeated in every one of them by a uniform pro- 
cess of development, which, in a short space of time, pro- 
duces a series of astonishing changes. The seed becomes a 
tree, and the tree differs from the seed immeasurably in 
bulk, structure, color, form, specific gravity, and chemical 
composition ; so that no visible resemblance can be pointed 
out between them. The small, semi-transparent gelatinous 
spherule constituting the human ovum becomes the newly- 
born child ; and this human infant "is so complex in its 
structure that a cyclopaodia is needed to describe its con- 
stituent parts. The germinal vesicle is so simple that it 
may be defined in a line. Nevertheless, a few months suf- 
fice to develop the one out of the other, and that, too, by 
a series of modifications so small that were the embryo 
examined, at successive minutes, even a microscope would 
with difficulty disclose any sensible changes. Aided by 
such facts, the concejotion of general evolution may be ren- 
dered as definite a conception as any of our complex con- 
ceptions can be rendered. If, instead of the successive 
minutes of a child's foetal life, we take successive genera- 
tions of creatures, if we regard the successive generations 
as differing from each other no more than the foetus did 
in successive minutes, our imaginations must indeed be 
feeble if we fail to realize in thought the evolution of the 
most complex organism out of the simplest. If a single 
cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the 
space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in 
understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell 
may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin 
to the human race." * 

Here, then, we have a comparison between what takes 
place in the development of the individual animal in the 

* " Biology," i, pp. 849, 350. 



178 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

space of a few years, and what may be supposed to take place 
in the successive generations of different creatures through 
untold millions of years. We turn then to the proof, direct 
or indirect, that races of entirely distinct organisms have 
resulted from antecedent races by gradual transformation. 
Direct proof sufficient to establish the progressive modifica- 
tions of antecedent races into other races is not claimed to 
exist ; yet it is claimed that there are numerous facts of the 
order required by the hypothesis which warrant our accept- 
ance of it. These facts are the alterations of structure 
which take place in successive generations of the same 
species, amounting, in the course of several generations of 
the same race, to additions and suppressions of parts. These 
changes among the individuals of the same race, compre- 
hended in what is scientifically called "heredity" and 
"variation," are exhibited by the transmission of ancestral 
peculiarities of structure, by their occasional suppression 
in some individuals of the race and their reappearance in 
others, and by a difference in the relative sizes of parts. 
These variations, arising in successive short intervals of 
time, are said to be quite as marked as those which arise 
in a developing embryo, and, in fact, they are said to be 
often much more marked. " The structural modifications 
proved to have taken place since organisms have been ob- 
served is not less than the hypothesis demands — bears as 
great a ratio to this brief period as the total amount of 
structural change seen in the evolution of a complex organ- 
ism out of a simple germ bears to the vast period during 
which living forms have existed on earth." * 

* "Biology," i, p. o51. I am not quite sure that I understand what 
Mr. Spencer means by " direct " proof. In the passage immediately follow- 
ing the sentence last quoted, he speaks of " the kind and quantity of direct 
evidence that all organic beings have gradually arisen," etc., whereas, in a 
previous passage, he had admitted that the facts at present assignable in 
direct poof of this hypothesis are insufficient. I presume he meant insuffi- 



SPENCER'S ARGUMENT. 179 

The difficulty that is thus prepared for the hypothesis 
of the special creation of species may now be stated. There 
is a professed conception of the ultimate power which is 
manifested to us through phenomena. That conception im- 
plies omnipotence and omniscience, and it therefore implies 
regularity of method, because uniformity of method is a 
mark of strength, whereas irregularity of method is a mark 
of weakness. "A persistent process, adapted to all contin- 
gencies, implies greater skill in the achievement of an end 
than its achievement by the process of meeting the contin- 
gencies as they severally arise." And, therefore, those who 
adopt the notion of the special creation of species do, it is 
said, in truth impair the professed character of the power 
to which they assume that the phenomena of the existence 
of species are to be referred, whereas the hypothesis of the 
evolution of species out of other species is much more con- 
sistent with the professed conception of the ultimate power. 

In this claim of superiority for the evolution hypothesis, 
the learned philosopher seems to have been almost oblivious 
of the fact that he was dealing with animal organisms in two 
aspects : first, in regard to the method by which individ- 
uals of the same species come into existence ; and, second- 
dent in number. (Compare " Biology," i, pp. 351 and 352). Now, I should 
say that direct proof of the hypothesis that all animal organisms have 
arisen successively out of one another would require more or less positive 
evidence of such occurrences ; and that the proof which is afforded by what 
has taken place within the limits of a single species in the course of succes- 
sive generations would be indirect evidence of what may have taken place 
in the evolution of different species, because it requires the aid of analogy 
to connect the two. I am not aware that there is supposed to be any proof 
of the evolution of species out of species, excepting that which is derived 
from what has taken place in single races in the development of the ovum 
into the infant, the development of the infant into the mature animal, and 
the limited varieties of structure appearing among individuals of the same 
race. As I go on through the examination of Mr. Spencer's argument, it 
will appear whether there are grounds for regarding this kind of reasoning 
as satisfactory or the reverse. 



180 OEEATIOl!^ OR EVOLUTION"? 

ly, in regard to the method by which different species have 
come into existence. In the first case, regularity of method 
is evinced by the establishment of a uniform process of 
procreation and gestation. This process, while retaining 
throughout the different classes of animals one funda- 
mental and characteristic method, namely, the union of 
the sexes, is widely varied in respect to the time of gesta- 
tion, the foetal development, and the nourishment of the 
young before and after birth. There is no difficulty what- 
ever in discovering the great reason for which this system 
of the reproduction of individuals was established. The 
tie that it makes between parents and offspring, and more 
especially the tie between the female parent and the off- 
spring, was obviously one grand end for which this system 
of giving existence to individuals was adopted ; and al- 
though the instinct which arises out of it is in some species 
feeble and almost inactive, it rises higher and higher in its 
power and its manifestations in proportion as the animals 
rise in the scale of being, until in man it exhibits its great- 
est force and its most various effects, producing at last pride 
of ancestry, and affecting in various ways the social and 
even the political condition of mankind. But how can 
any corresponding connection between one race of animals 
and another, or between antecedent and subsequent species, 
be imagined ? The sexual impulse implanted in animals 
leads to the production of offspring of the same race. The 
desire for offspring keeps up the perpetual succession of 
individuals, and love of the offspring insures the protection 
of the newly born by the most powerful of impulses. But 
what can be imagined as an analogous impulse, appetite, or 
propensity which should lead one species to strive after the 
production of another species ? Is it said that the different 
species are evolved out of one another by a process in which 
the conscious desires, the efforts, the aspirations of the pre- 
ceding races play no part ? This is certainly true, if there 



EEGULARITY AND IRREGULARITY OF METHOD. 181 

was ever any such process as the evolution of species out of 
species ; and it follows that, in respect to one great moral 
purpose of a process, there is no analogy to be derived from 
the regularity and uniformity of the process by which in- 
dividuals of the same species are multiplied. Moreover, in 
regard to the latter process, we know that a barrier has 
been set to its operation ; for N^ature does not now admit 
of the sexual union between animals of entirely distinct 
species, and we have no reason to believe that it ever did 
admit of it at any period in the geological history of the 
earth. 

Still further: In what sense are special creations '^ir- 
regularities of method" ? In what sense are they ** con- 
tingencies" ? And if they are "contingencies," how does 
it imply less skill to suppose that they have been met as 
they have severally arisen, than would be implied by sup- 
posing that they have been achieved by a uniform process 
adapted to all contingencies ? This notion that something 
is derogated from the idea of omnipotence and omniscience 
by the hypothesis that such a power has acted by special 
exercises of its creating faculty in the production of differ- 
ent orders of beings as completed and final types, instead 
of allowing or causing them to be successively evolved out 
of each other by gradual derivations, is neither logical nor 
philosophical. In no proper sense is a method of action an 
irregular method unless it was imposed upon the actor by 
some antecedent necessity, which compelled him to apply 
a method which was made uniform in one case to another 
case in which the same kind of uniformity would not be 
indispensable. The uniformity of the process by which in- 
dividuals of the same species are multiplied is a uniformity 
for that particular end. The regularity in that case is a 
regularity that has its special objects to accomplish. The 
uniformity and regularity of a different method of causing 
different types of organisms to exist, so long as the object 



182 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

is always effected in the same way, is just as truly a regu- 
larity and uniformity for that case, and just as completely 
fulfills the idea of infinite skill. That such creations are 
specially made, that they are independently made, and that 
each is made for a distinct purpose and also for the com- 
plex purposes of a varied class of organisms, does not ren- 
der them contingencies arising at random, or make the 
method of meeting them an occasional, irregular, spas- 
modic device for encountering something unforeseen and 
unexpected. The very purposes for which the distinct or- 
ganisms exist — ^purposes that are apparent on a comprehen- 
sive survey of their various structures and modes of life — 
and the fact that they have come into existence by some 
process that was for the production of the ends a uniform 
and regular one, whether that process was special creation 
or evolution, render the two methods of action equally con- 
sistent with the professed conception of the ultimate power. 
On the hypothesis of special creations so many different 
types of organism as the Creator has seen fit to create have 
been made by the exercise of a power remaining uniformly 
of the same infinite nature, but varying the products at 
will for the purposes of infinite wisdom. 

What, again, does the learned author mean by meeting 
'^ contingencies" ^^as they have severally arisen"? This 
suggestion of a difficulty for the believers in special crea- 
tions seems to imply that the distinct types of animal or- 
ganisms arose somehow as necessities outside of the divine 
will, and that the Almighty artificer had to devise occa- 
sional methods of meeting successive demands which he 
did not create. The hypothesis of special creations does 
not drive its believers into any such implications. The 
several distinct types of animal organisms are supposed to 
have arisen in the divine mind as types which the Almighty 
saw fit to create for certain purposes, and to have been sev- 
erally fashioned as types by his infinite power. They are 



SUPPOSED ANALOGIES. 183 

in no sense "contingencies" which he had to meet as occa- 
sions arising outside of his infinite will. A human artifi- 
cer has conceived and executed upon a novel plan a ma- 
chine that is distinguishable from all other machines. He 
did not create the demand for that machine ; the demand 
has grown out of the wants of society; and the artificer 
has met the demand by his genius and his mechanical 
skill, which have effected a marked improvement in the 
condition of society. In one sense, therefore, he has met a 
" contingency,'' because he has met a demand. But the 
infinite Creator, upon the hypothesis of his existence and 
attributes, does not meet an external demand ; there is no 
demand upon him ; he creates the occasion ; he makes the 
different organisms to effectuate the infinite purposes which 
he also creates ; the want and the means of satisfying the 
want alike arise in the infinite wisdom and will. Such is 
the hypothesis. We may now, therefore, pursue in some 
further detail the argument which maintains that this hy- 
pothesis is of far inferior strength to that of evolution, as 
the method in which the Almighty power has acted in the 
production of different animal organisms. 

First we have the analogy that is supposed to be afford- 
ed by what takes place in the development of a single cell 
into a man in the space of a few years, and an alleged cor- 
respondence of development by which a single cell, in the 
course of untold millions of years, has given origin to the 
human race. Granting any difference of time which this 
comparison calls for, and substituting in place of the suc- 
cessive moments or years of an individual life, from the 
formation of the ovum to the fully developed animal, the 
successive generations of any imaginable series of animals, 
the question is not merely what we can definitely conceive, 
or how successfully we can construct a theory. It is 
whether the supposed analogy will hold ; whether we can 
find that in the two cases development takes place in the 



184 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

same way or in a way that is so nearly alike in the two cases 
as to warrant us in reasoning from the one to the other. 
In the case of the development of the single cell into the 
mature animal, although we can not, either before or after 
birth, detect the changes that are taking place from minute 
to minute, the infinitesimal accretions or losses, we know 
that there is a perpetual and unbroken connection of life 
maintained from the moment when the foetus is formed to 
the moment when the mature animal stands before us. 
Break this connection anywhere in the process of develop- 
ment, and life is destroyed ; the development is at once ar- 
rested. It is this connection that constitutes, as I presume, 
what the learned author calls the *^ appropriate conditions," 
in the case of the production of the individual animal ; it 
is, at all events, the one grand and indispensable condition 
to the development of the cell into the foetus, of the foetus 
into the newly born child, and of the child into the man. 
Now, if we are to reason from this case of individual devel- 
opment to the other case of successive generations of creat- 
ures differing from each other in the same or any other 
ratio in which the perfect man differs from the ovum, the 
foetus, or the newly born child, which are all successive 
stages of one and the same individual life, we ought to find 
in the successive generations of the different creatures some 
bond of connection, some continuity of lives with lives, 
some perpetuation from one organism to another, that will 
constitute the *' appropriate conditions " for a correspond- 
ing development from a single cell through the successive 
types of animal life into the human race. Without such 
connection, continuity, perpetuation from organism to or- 
ganism, shown by some satisfactory proof, we have nothing 
but a theory, and a theory that is destitute of the grand 
conditions that will alone support the analogy between the 
two cases. If anywhere in the supposed chain of successive 
generations of different animals the continuity of animal 



INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY EESEMBLANCES. 185 

and animal is broken, the hypothesis of special creations of 
new organisms must come in : for we must remember that 
we are reasoning about animal life, and if the continuity of 
lives with one another is interrupted, the series terminates, 
just as the series between the ovum, the foetus, the child, 
and the man terminates, at whatever stage it is interrupted 
by a cause that destroys the mysterious principle of life. 
It is therefore absolutely necessary to look for some proof 
which will show that in the supposed series of successive 
generations of animals out of antecedent types, by what- 
ever gradations and in whatever space of time we may sup- 
pose the process of evolution to have been worked, there 
has been a continuity of life between the different types, a 
perpetuation of organism from organism, a connection of 
lives with lives. 

We now come to another supposed analogy, on which 
great stress ig^ laid by the evolution school, and especially 
by Mr. Spencer. Individuals of the same family are found 
to be marked by striking peculiarities of structure, ances- 
tral traits, which appear and disappear and then appear 
again, in successive generations. This is obviously a case 
where the '* appropriate conditions" are all comprehended 
in the connection of life with life. When we trace the 
pedigree of a single man or any other individual animal 
back to a remote pair of ancestors, we connect together in 
an unbroken chain the successive generations of parents 
and offspring. If the chain is anywhere broken, so that 
direct descent can not be traced throughout the series, we 
can not by direct evidence carry the peculiarities of family 
traits any further back than the ancestor or pair of ances- 
tors with which we can find an unbroken connection of life 
with life. We do indeed often say in common parlance 
that an individual must have a trace of a certain blood in 
his veins, because of certain peculiarities of structure, com- 
plexion, or other tokens of descent, even when we can not 



186 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

find a perfect pedigree which would show where the infu- 
sion of the supposed blood came in. But although it might 
be allowable, in making out the descent of an indiyidual 
man or any other animal, from a certain ancestor or pair of 
ancestors, to aid the pedigree by strong family or race re- 
semblance, even when a link is wanting, it could only be 
for the purpose of establishing a pedigree, a connection of 
lives with lives, that such collateral evidence could be re- 
sorted to. If by direct proof of an unbroken descent a full 
pedigree is made out, or if, when some link is wanting, the 
collateral proof from strong family or race resemblances is 
sufficient to warrant the belief that the link once existed, 
we might accept it as a fact that the individual descended 
from the supposed ancestors in a direct line, or that some 
peculiarity of blood came into his constitution at some 
point in the descent of individuals from individuals.* 

* I have stated here, in reference to the pedigree of an individual, a far 
more liberal rule of evidence than would probably be allowed in courts of 
justice, where anything of value was depending upon the establishment of 
a descent from a certain ancestor. But I have purposely suggested the 
broadest rule that can be applied to family or race resemblances as a means 
of aiding a pedigree in popular determination or in a judicium rusticum. 
For example, suppose that there were persons now living in this coun- 
try who trace their descent from the English husband of Pocahontas, the 
daughter of an Indian chief, and from her. They bear, we will suppose, 
the family name of the Englishman whom she is known to have married, 
and perhaps one of them bears very strong I'esemblance to the Indian race 
in features, complexion, and hair. In a judicial trial of this person's sup- 
posed pedigree I do not suppose that these resemblances, if they constituted 
his sole evidence, together with the name of Rolfe which he bears, and 
which a certain number of his ancestors may have borne before him, would 
be received as evidence of his descent from the Indian girl whose name was 
Pocahontas, and who married an Englishman of the name of Rolfe more 
than two centuries ago. It would be necessary to make some proof of the 
whole pedigree by the kind of evidence which the law admits in such cases, 
and then the resemblances of the individual to the Indian race might pos- 
sibly be received as confirmatory proof, in aid of the proof derived from 



NECESSARY CONNECTIONS WANTING. 187 

Can we apply this mode of reasoning to the evolution 
of distinct types of animals out of antecedent and different 
types ? The very nature of the descent or derivation that 
is to be satisfactorily established requires a connection of 
lives with lives, just as such a connection is required in 
making out the pedigree of an individual animal. We 
must construct a pedigree for the different classes or types 
of animals through which, by direct or collateral evidence, 
we can connect the different organisms together, so as to 
warrant the belief that by the ordinary process of genera- 
tion these animals of widely different organizations have 
been successfully developed out of each other, life from 
life, organisms from organisms. The hypothesis is, that 
from a single cell all the various races and types of animals 
have in process of time been gradually formed out of each 
other, through an ascending scale, until we reach the human 
race, whose race pedigree consists of a series of impercepti- 
ble formations, back to the single cell from which the whole 
series proceeded. This, we must remember, is not a case 
of the evolving production of different forms of inanimate 
matter, but it is the case of the evolving production of dif- 
ferent forms of animal life out of other preceding and dif- 
ferent forms, by the process of animal generation. 

Of direct evidence of this evolution of species, it can 
not be said that we have any which will make it a parallel 
case with the direct evidence of the descent of an individual 
from parents and other ancestors. We have different ani- 
mal organisms that are marked by distinctions which com- 

the family name of Pocahontas's English husband, from reputation, written 
or oral declarations of deceased witnesses, family documents, ancient grave- 
stones, and the like. In popular judgment most persons would be apt to 
accept the family name of Rolfe and the apparent trace of Indian blood as 
sufficient proof of the descent of the individual from the Indian girl who 
married John Eolfe. But in a court of justice these facts would go for 
nothing without some independent proof of the pedigree. 



188 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

pel us to regard them as separate species, and there is no 
known instance in which we can directly trace a production 
of one of these distinct species out of another or others by 
finding a connection of lives with lives. Even in the vege- 
table kingdom, with all the crosses for which Nature has 
made such wonderful and various provision, we do not find 
such occurrences as the production of an oak out of the 
seed of an apple, or the production of an orange-tree out of 
an acorn. We do not gather grapes of thorns or figs of 
thistles. There are barriers set to miscegenation even in 
the vegetable world, and we have no direct evidence that at 
any period in the geological history of the earth these bar- 
riers have been crossed, and very little indirect evidence to 
warrant us in believing that they ever have been or ever 
will be. In the animal kingdom such barriers are extreme- 
ly prominent and certain. We not only have no direct 
evidence that any one species of animal was at any period 
of the earth's history or in any length of time gradually 
evolved out of another distinct species, but we know that 
the union of the sexes and the production of new individ- 
uals can not take place out of certain limits ; that, while 
Nature will permit of the crossing of different breeds of the 
same animal, and so will admit of very limited variations of 
structure, she will not admit of the sexual union of differ- 
ent species, so as to produce individuals having a union of 
the different organisms, or a resultant of a third organism 
of a different type from any that had preceded it. Is it, 
for example, from mere taste or moral feeling that such 
occurrences as the sexual union between man and beast 
have not been known to have produced a third and differ- 
ent animal ? We know that it is because the Almighty has 
'* fixed his canon" against such a union in the case of man 
and in the cases of all the other distinct animal organisms ; 
and to find this canon we do not need to go to Scripture or 
revelation, although we may find it there also. 



THE INDIRECT EVIDENCE. 189 

We are remitted, therefore, to indirect evidence, and in 
considering this evidence we have to note that we have 
nothing but an imaginary pedigree, or one hypothetically 
constructed, to which to apply it. In tracing the pedigree 
of an individual animal, we have a certain number of 
known connections of life with life ; and where it becomes 
necessary to bridge over a break in the connection so as to 
carry the line back to an earlier ancestor, we may perhaps 
apply the collateral evidence of family or race resemblance 
to assist in making the connection with that particular 
ancestor a reasonably safe deduction. But in the case of 
the hypothetical pedigree which supposes the human race 
to have been evolved from a single cell through successive 
organisms rising higher and higher in the scale of being, 
we have no known connections of lives with lives to which 
to apply the collateral proofs. The collateral proofs are 
not auxiliary evidence ; they are the sole evidence ; and 
unless they are such as to exclude every other reasonable 
explanation of the phenomena which they exhibit except- 
ing that of the supposed evolution, they can not be said to 
satisfy the rules of rational belief in the hypothesis to 
which we apply them. 

What, then, is the indirect and collateral evidence ? It 
consists, as we have already seen, of two principal classes 
of phenomena : first, resemblances of foetal development 
which are found on comparing the foetal growth of differ- 
ent species of animals ; second, resemblances in the struct- 
ure of different species of animals after birth and maturity. 
These various resemblances are supposed to constitute proof 
of descent from a common stock, which may be carried 
back in the series as far as the resemblance can be carried, 
at whatever point that may be. Thus, in comparing all the 
vertebrata, we find certain marked peculiarities of struct- 
ure common to the whole class : the deduction is, that all 
the vertebrate animals came from a common stock. In 



190 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

comparing all the mammalia, we find certain marked pe- 
culiarities of structure common to the whole class : the de- 
duction IS that all the mammalia came from a common 
stock. Going still further back in the supposed series, we 
come to the amphibians, as the supposed common stock 
from which the vertebrate and mammalian land animals 
were derived ; and, comparing the different classes of the 
amphibians, we find certain resemblances which point to 
the fish inhabitants of the water as their common stock ; 
and then we trace the more highly organized fishes through 
the more lowly organized back to the aquatic worm, which 
may itself be supposed to have been developed out of a 
single cell.* 

The resemblances of structure, wherever we make the 
comparison between different species, are referable to an 
ideal plan of animal construction, followed throughout a 
class of animals, and adjusted to their peculiar differences 
which distinguish one species from another, just as in the 
vegetable world there is an ideal plan of construction of 
trees followed throughout a class of plants, and adjusted to 
the peculiar differences which distinguish one kind of tree 
from another. As between man and the monkey, or be- 
tween man and the horse, or the seal, or the bat, or the 
bird, there are certain resemblances in the structure of the 
skeleton, which indicate an identity of plan, although va- 
ried in its adjustments to the distinguishing structure of 
each separate species of animal. In a former chapter, I 
have shown why the adoption of an ideal plan of a general 
character is consistent with what I have called the *^ econ- 
omy of Nature " in the special creation of different species. 
On a careful revision of the subject, I can see no reason to 

* See the table of the Darwinian pedigree of man, ante. Any other 
mode of arranging the order of evolution that will admit of the applica- 
tion of the steps of supposed development to what is known of the ani- 
mal kingdom, will equally serve to illustrate the theory. 



BRAIN OF MAN AND THE APE. 191 

change the expression, or to modify the idea which it was 
intended to convey, and which I will here repeat. It is 
entirely consistent with the conception of an infinite and 
ail- wise creating power, to suppose that in the formation 
of a large class of organisms, all the constructive power 
that was needed for the formation of a general plan was 
exercised throughout the class, and that there was super- 
added the exercise of all the power of variation that was 
needful to produce distinct species. Repetition of the same 
general plan of construction is certainly no mark of in- 
feriority of original power, if accompanied by adaptations 
to new and further conditions. It is a proof that in one 
direction all the necessary power was used, and no more, 
and that in producing the distinct organisms the necessary 
amount of further power was also used. If we follow the 
resemblances of structure that may be traced through all 
the animals of a varied class, we shall find that they may 
be referred, as a rational and consistent hypothesis, to this 
method of giving to each animal its characteristic forma- 
tion. If this is a rational hypothesis, it is so because it is 
consistent with all the observable phenomena ; and con- 
sequently, the opposite hypothesis that all these phenomena 
of resemblances and differences are due to the law of evolu- 
tion does not exclude every other explanation of their ex- 
istence. 

To apply this now to one of the comparisons on which 
great stress is laid — the comparison between the brain of 
man and that of the ape. Two questions arise in this com- 
parison : 1. Do the resemblances necessarily show that 
these two animals came from a common stock ? 2. Do 
the resemblances necessarily show that man was descended 
from some ape through intermediate animals by gradual 
transformations ? And, when I ask whether the compari- 
son necessarily leads to these conclusions, I mean to ask 
whether the resemblances point so strongly to the conclu- 



192 CREATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

sions that they must rationally be held to exclude every 
other hyi:)o thesis. 

Prof. Huxley furnished to Mr. Darwin a yery learned 
note, in which he stated the results of all that is now 
known concerning the resemblances and differences in 
the structure and the development of the brain in man 
and the apes. The differences may be laid aside in the 
present discussion, because it is not necessary, for my pres- 
ent purpose, to found anything upon them. But the re- 
semblances, just as they are stated by the eminent anat- 
omist, without regard to controverted details, are the im- 
portant facts to be considered. The substance of the 
whole comparison is that the cerebral hemispheres in 
man and the higher apes are disposed after the very same 
pattern in him as in them: that every principal ^^gjnrus" 
and *^ sulcus " of a chimpanzee's brain is clearly represented 
in that of a man, so that the terminology which applies to 
one answers for the other ; that there is no dispute as to 
the resemblance in fundamental character between the 
ape's brain and man's ; and that even the details of the 
arrangement of the "gyri" and "sulci" of the cerebral 
hemispheres present a wonderfully close similarity between 
the chimpanzee, orang, and man.* These are said to be 
the result of a comparison of the adult brain of man and 
the higher apes ; and, although it is claimed by some anat- 
omists that there are fundamental differences in the mode 
of their development which point to a difference of origin, 
this is denied by Huxley, who maintains that there is a 
fundamental agreement in the development of the brain in 
man and apes. His views of the facts for the purpose of 
the present inquiry may be accepted without controversy, 
not only because he is an authority whose statements of 
facts I am not disposed to dispute, but because it is 

* Darwin's " Descent of Man," Prof. Huxley's note, p. 199 et seg. 



BRAIN OF MAN AND THE APE. 193 

not necessary to dispute them. What, then, do they 
show ? 

They show that there are animals known as apes and 
animals known as men, whose brains are found to be fun- 
damentally constructed upon the same general plan, with 
strong resemblances throughout the different parts of the 
organ ; and the first question is. Do these resemblances show 
that the two animals came from a common stock ? Upon 
the theory that man has resulted from the gradual modifi- 
cations of the same form as that from which the apes have 
sprung, the resemblances in the structure of their respective 
brains are claimed as having a tendency tp show that there 
was an animal which preceded both of them, and which 
was their common ancestor, in the same sense in which an 
mdividual progenitor was the common ancestor of two 
other individuals, whether one of these two individuals 
was or was not descended from the other in a direct line. 
On the other hand, upon the hypothesis of the special cre- 
ation of the ape as one animal, and the special creation of 
man as another animal, there was no common stock from 
which the two animals have been derived, and the resem- 
blances of their brains point to the adoption of a general 
plan of construction for that organ, or its construction 
upon the same model, and the adaptation of that model to 
the other parts of the structure, and the purposes of the 
existence of each of the two animals. Without again re- 
peating the argument which shows that the latter hypothe- 
sis is perfectly consistent with the professed conception of 
the infinite power, I will now inquire whether, on the 
former hypothesis, we have anything to which we can ap- 
ply the evidence of resemblance as a collateral aid in reach- 
ing the conclusion that these two animals were derived 
from a common progenitor, or from some antecedent ani- 
mal whose brain and other parts of the structure became 
modified into theirs by numerous intermediate gradations. 



194 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

Between the higher apes, or between any of the apes and 
any known antecedent and different animal, no naturalist 
has discovered the intermediate link or links. Darwin sup- 
poses that there was some one extremely ancient progenitor 
from which proceeded the two main divisions of the SimiadcB 
— namely, the Catarrhine and Platyrhine monkeys, with 
their sub-groups. This extremely ancient progenitor is noth- 
ing but a scientific hypothesis ; or, to use a legal phrase, it 
had nothing but a constructive existence. It is necessary to 
believe in the principle of evolution, in order to work out 
the hypothesis of this creature from which the two great 
stems of the SimiadcB are supposed to have proceeded. Here, 
then, we have the case of a pedigree or succession of animal 
races, the propositum of which has no known existence. 
Next we have two known divisions of the Simiadm, or 
monkeys ; but, between them and their imaginary common 
progenitor, we have no known intermediate animals consti- 
tuting the gradations of structure from the progenitor to 
the descendants. The whole chain has to be made out by 
tracing resemblances among the animals of a certain class 
that are known, then applying these resemblances to the 
supposed divergencies from the structure of a supposed 
progenitor, and then drawing the conclusion that there 
was such a progenitor. It may be submitted to the 
common sense of mankind, whether this is a state of facts 
which will warrant scientists or philosophers in using to- 
ward those who do not accept their theory quite so much of 
the de Jiaut en las style of remark as we find in the writings 
of Mr. Spencer.* If the researches of geologists had ever 

* Mr. Spencer observes that the hypothesis of special creations is one 
" which formulates absolute ignorance into a semblance of positive knowl- 
edge. . . . Thus, however regarded, the hypothesis of special creations 
turns out to be worthless— worthless by its derivation ; worthless in its in- 
trinsic incoherence ; worthless as absolutely without evidence ; worthless as 
not satisfying a moral want. We must therefore consider it as counting 



BRAIN OF MAN AND THE APE. 195 

discovered any remains of an animal tliat would fulfill the 
requirements, and thus stand as the progenitor of the 
SimiadcB, the case would correspond to that of a known in- 
dividual from whom we undertake to trace the descent of 
another individual through many intermediates ; and in 
such a case strong family resemblances of various kinds 
might possibly afford some aid in making out the pedigree 
as a reliable conclusion. But there is no means of connect- 
ing the Old World and the New World apes with any but 
an unknown and imaginary progenitor. Darwin himself 
frankly tells us that " the early progenitor of the whole 
Simian stock, including man,^' is an undiscovered animal, 
which may not have been identical with, or may not even 
have closely resembled, any existing ape or monkej".* 

Passing from the supposed common progenitor to the 
resemblances between the brain of the higher apes and the 
brain of man, we come to the question whether these re- 
semblances show that man was descended from any of the 
Simian stock through intermediate animals by gradual 
transformation. Here the case is in one respect different ; 
for the animals that are to be compared are known, and 
their respective brains have been subjected to close anatomi- 
cal scrutiny. This part of the process of evolution begins 
from one true species, the ape, and ends in another true 

for nothing, in opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the origin of 
organic beings." There is a great deal more in the same tone. (See " Bi- 
ology," i, pp. 344, 345, and passim throughout Chapters II and III of Part 
III of that work.) Mr. Darwin, who is suflBciently positive, is much more 
moderate, and in my opinion a much better reasoner, although I can not 
subscribe to his reasoning or his conclusions. A rather irreverent naval 
oflScer of my acquaintance once extolled a doctrinal sermon, which he had 
just heard preached by a Unitarian clergyman, in this fashion : " I tell you 
what, sir, the preacher did not leave the Trinity a leg to stand upon." 
Probably some of Mr. Spencer's readers think that he has equally demol- 
ished the doctrine of special creations. 
* "Descent of Man," p. 155. 
10 



196 CKEATION OK EVOLUTION? 

species, the man. We are unable to trace the man and the 
ape to a common progenitor race ; but we find the ape pos- 
sessed of a brain which strongly resembles man's. I have 
searched diligently in the writings of naturalists for a sound 
reason which ought rationally to exclude the hypothesis 
that the brain of the ape was formed upon the same ideal 
plan as the brain of man, each animal being a distinct spe- 
cies and separately created. Anatomical comparison of the 
two brains shows that, whether they were separately planned 
upon the same general model, or the one was derived from 
the other by a process of gradual transformation through 
successive intermediate animals, the resemblances are con- 
sistent with either hypothesis. We are remitted, therefore, 
to an inquiry for the evidence which will establish the 
existence of a race or races of animals through whom there 
descended to man the peculiar structure of brain found in 
one of the classes of apes — namely, the Catarrhine or Old 
World monkeys. If such intermediate races could be 
found, their existence at any period anterior to the period 
of man's appearance on earth would have some tendency 
to show that man was descended from one of the families 
of apes, and this tendency would become stronger in pro- 
portion to the number of successive links in the family 
chain that could be made out. But not one of these links 
is known to have existed. There is an assumption that 
man, *'from a genealogical point of view, belongs to the 
Catarrhine or Old World stock " of monkeys ; and this as- 
sumption is claimed to be supported by the fact that the 
character of his brain is fundamentally the same as theirs. 

A brain is an organ which, upon the hypothesis of an 
independent creation of distinct species of animals, would 
be expected to be found in very numerous species, although 
they might differ widely from each other. In all the ver- 
tebrate animals this organ is the one from which, by its 
connection with the spinal chord, the central portion of the 



OFFICE OF A BRAIN. 197 

nervous system, that system descends through the arches of 
the vertebrae, and thence radiates to the various other or- 
gans of the body. The brain is the central seat of sensa- 
tion, to which are transmitted, along certain nerves, the 
impressions produced upon or arising in the other organs ; 
and it is the source from which voluntary activity is trans- 
mitted along other nerves to organs and muscles that are 
subjected to a power of movement from within. The oflBce 
which such an organ performs in a complex piece of animal 
mechanism is therefore the same in all the vertebrate ani- 
mals in which it is found ; and it would necessarily be 
found to be constructed upon the same uniform plan, and 
with just the degree of uniformity and adaptation which 
would fit it to perform its ofiice in the particular species of 
animal to which it might be given. In point of fact, we 
find this office of the brain performed in all the vertebrate 
animals upon the same uniform plan, with the necessary 
adaptations to the various structures of the different ani- 
mals. Kesemblances, therefore, in the convolutions of differ- 
ent parts of this organ, as found in different vertebrate ani- 
mals, however close they may be, prove nothing more than 
the adoption of a general plan for the production of objects 
common to the whole class of the vertebrate animals ; and 
unless we can find other and independent proof that one 
species was descended from another by connection of lives 
with lives through successive generations, the hypothesis of 
special creations of the different species is not excluded by 
the facts. 

Let us now further examine the supposed kinship of 
man with the monkey, as evidenced by the similarity of 
the structure of the brains of the two animals, in reference 
to the supposed process of evolution as the means of ac- 
counting for the origin of two species so essentially distinct. 
How has it happened that different species have become 
completed and final types, transmitting, after they have 



198 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

become completed, one and the same type, by the ordinary 
process of generation, and not admitting of the sexual 
union with any other distinct species ? On the theory of 
the evolution of animal out of animal, we must suppose 
that at some time the secondary causes of natural and sex- 
ual selection have done their work. It ends in the produc- 
tion of a species which thereafter remains one and the 
same animal, and Nature has established a barrier to any 
sexual union with any other species. If we give the rein 
to our imaginations, and, taking the process of evolution as 
it is described to us, suppose that in the long course of 
countless ages the struggle for existence among very nu- 
merous individuals has led to gradual transformations of 
structure which the sexual selection has transmitted to 
offspring, and so a new animal has at length been formed 
through the successive "survivals of the fittest," we reach 
an animal of a new species, and that species, under no cir- 
cumstances, produces any type but its own, so far as we have 
any means of knowledge. All the knowledge respecting 
the ape that has been accumulated shows only that this 
species of animal, since it became a completed type, has 
procreated its own type and no other. Whatever struggle 
for existence the individuals of this type have had to under- 
go, whatever modifications of structure or habits of life 
the survival of the fittest individuals of this type may have 
produced from the earliest imaginable period until the pres- 
ent time, the fact remains that this species of animal is a 
completed and final product. At the same time we have 
another completed and final type of animal known as man, 
which, so long as he has been known at all, is a distinct 
and peculiar species. Between the brain of this animal and 
the brain of the other we find certain strong resemblances. 
In each of them this organ is a structure performing the 
same office in the animal mechanism, with adaptations pe- 
culiar to the varying structure of each of them. In order 



KINSHIP OF MAN AND THE APES. 199 

to justify the conclusion that the one animal is a modified 
descendant from the other, so as to exclude the hypothesis 
that the resemblances of any one or of all of their respective 
organs was a result of the adoption of a general plan in 
special creations of distinct species, we ought to find some 
instance or instances in which the completed animal called 
the ape has been developed into an animal approaching 
more nearly to man than the man, as he is first known to 
us, approached to the first ape that is known to us. With- 
out such intermediate connections, the analogy of the de- 
scent of individuals from other individuals of the same 
species will not hold. There is nothing left but resem- 
blances of structure in one or more organs, which are just 
as consistent with the hypothesis of special creations as 
with that of evolution. Strong resemblances of structure 
and in the oflBces of different organs may be found between 
man and the horse, but upon no theory of evolution has it 
been suggested that man is descended from the horse, or 
from any other animal to which he bears more or less re- 
semblance, excepting the monkey ; and it is quite possible 
that naturalists have been led unconsciously to make this 
exception by external resemblances of the monkey and the 
man, by the imitative power of the inferior animal when it 
comes in contact with man, and by some of its habits when 
found in its wild and native haunts. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The doctrine of evolution, according to Herbert Spencer, further considered. 

In" the last two preceding chapters I have examined 
what Mr. Spencer regards as the direct supports of the doc- 
trine of eyolution. I haye now to consider the different 
orders of facts which, as he claims, yield to it indirect 
support. These are the facts derived from classification, 
from embryology, from morphology, and from distribution. 
An explanation is here needful of the sense in which he 
uses these respective terms, before the reader, who is not 
accustomed to them, is called upon to understand and ap- 
preciate the argument : 

1. By classification is meant an arrangement of organic 
beings in some systematic manner, according to attributes 
which they have in common, and which may form the 
principle of a division into different classes or families. 
Pointing out that in the early history of botanical and 
zoological science the tendency was to make classifications 
according to a single characteristic, Mr. Spencer reminds 
us that later naturalists, by attending to a greater number 
of characteristics, and finally to the greatest number that 
can be found to be common to various classes of vegetable 
and animal organisms, have constructed systems of classifi- 
cation which, in place of a linear or a serial order, have 
exhibited the alliances of different groups, then the sub- 
groups, and the sub-sub-groups, so that the divergences 
and redivergences become developed, while the resemblances 



EMBRYOLOGY. 201 

which obtain are preserved throughout the whole class. 
But it is at once apparent that, although classification, on 
whatever principle it is conducted, may be valuable as a 
means of fixing in the mind the resemblances or differences 
of structure that obtain in the different orders of organ- 
ized beings, as, for example, among the vertebrate or the 
invertebrate animals, the flowering or the flowerless plants, 
the seeds naked or the seeds inclosed in seed-vessels, yet 
that any other system of classification, based upon other 
resemblances or differences which actually present means 
of grouping or separating the different families of organized 
beings, is just as valuable an aid in the investigation of facts. 
How far any classification affords an argument, or the means 
of constructing an argument, which will yield a support to 
the doctrine of evolution superior to that which it yields to 
the doctrine of special creations, is of course a question. 

2. Embryology : This is the term employed to express 
that branch of inquiry which is concerned in a comparison 
of the increase of different organisms through the stages of 
their embryonic life, and in noting at different stages of 
this growth the characters which they have in common 
with each other ; the resemblances of structure which at 
corresponding phases of a later embryonic stage are dis- 
played by a less extensive multitude of organisms ; and so 
on step by step, until we find the class of resembling em- 
bryos becoming narrower and narrower, and then we finally 
end in the species of which a particular embryo is a member. 
This process of tracing and eliminating embryonic resem- 
blances is said to have "a profound significance " ; because, 
beginning with a great multitude of resemblances between 
the embryonic development of different organisms, it re- 
veals the divergences which they take on, and through every 
successive step we find new divergences, by means of which 
" we may construct an embryological tree, expressing the 
developmental relations of the organisms, resembling the 



202 CREATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

tree which symbolizes their classificatory relations." We 
thus arrive at " that subordination of classes, orders, gen- 
era and species, to which naturalists have been gradually 
led," and which is said to be *'that subordination which 
results from the divergence and redivergence of embryos, 
as they all unfold."* On this mode of comparing the 
embryonic development of different organized beings Mr. 
Spencer builds a scientific parallelism, which indicates, as 
he claims, a ^* primordial kinship of all organisms," and a 
"progressive differentiation of them," which justifies a be- 
lief in an original stock from which they have all been de- 
rived. In what way this method of investigation destroys 
or tends to destroy the hypothesis of special creations, or 
how it affords an important support to the doctrine of evo- 
lution, will be considered hereafter, f 

3. Morphology, or the science of form, involves a com- 
parison of the structure of different organisms in their 
mature state ; an ascertainment of the resemblances between 
their structures, and of the community of plan that exists 
between them. Here, as in the aids derived from classifi- 
cation and embryology, it is claimed that the fundamental 
likenesses of forms of structure have a meaning which is 
altogether inconsistent with the hypothesis of predetermined 

* " Biology," i, p. 366. 

f " In the presence of the various genealogical trees of animal descent 
which have been put forward so frequently of late, a judicious skepticism 
seems the attitude best warranted by the evidence yet obtained. If so 
many similar forms have arisen in mutual independence, then the affinities 
of the animal kingdom can never be represented by the symbol of a tree. 
Rather, wc should conceive of the existence of a grove of trees, closely ap- 
proximated, greatly differing in age and size, with their branches interlaced 
in a most complex entanglement. The great group of apes is composed of 
two such branches ; but their relations one to another, to the other branches 
which represent mammalian groups, and to the trunks from which such 
branches diverge, are problems still awaiting solution." — ^'' Encyclopcedia 
Britannica^'' article " ulpes." 



DISTEIBUTIOK 203 

typical plans pursued throughout immensely varied forms 
of organisms. 

4. Distribution : This is the term applied to the phe- 
nomena exhibited by the presence of different organisms in 
different localities of the globe ; or, as Mr. Spencer phrases 
it, "the phenomena of distribution in space.'' These phe- 
nomena are very various. Sometimes, it is said, we find 
adjacent territories, with similar conditions, occupied by 
quite different faunas. In other regions, we find closely 
allied faunas in areas remote from each other in latitude, 
and contrasted in both soil and climate. The reasoning, as 
given by Mr. Darwin and adopted by Mr. Spencer, is this : 
that *^ as like organisms are not universally or even gener- 
ally found in like habitats, nor very unlike organisms in 
very unlike habitats, there is no predetermined adapta- 
tion of the organisms to the habitats." *^In other words," 
Mr. Spencer adds, *'the facts of distribution in space do 
not conform to the hypothesis of design. " The reason why 
they do not is claimed to be that there are impassable bar- 
riers between the similar areas which are peopled by dissim- 
ilar forms ; whereas there are no such barriers between the 
dissimilar areas which are peopled by dissimilar forms. 
The conclusion is, '* that each species of organism tends ever 
to expand its sphere of existence — to intrude on other areas, 
other modes of life, other media." That is to say, there is a 
constant competition among races of organisms for posses- 
sion of the fields in which they can find the means of sub- 
sistence and expansion ; and this leads to new modes of ex- 
istence, new media of life, new structures and new habitats. 

The reader can now retrace his steps, and advert to the 
facts that are relied upon, under the four heads of the ar- 
gument : 

1. With regard to the argument derived from classifica- 
tion : it is to be observed that any system of classification 
is in a certain sense artificial, and at all events is manifestly 



204 CEEATION OE EVOLUTION? 

conventional. But, in order that no injustice may be done 
to this branch of the argument for evolution, I shall state 
it in its full force. The classifications which naturalists 
make of the different organized beings according to their 
resemblances and differences reveal the fact of unity amid 
multiformity. This fact it is said points to propinquity of 
descent, ** which is the only known cause of the similarity 
of organic beings." It is the bond, hidden indeed by vari- 
ous degrees of modification, but nevertheless revealed to 
us by the classifications which display the resemblances. 
Again, we have, it is said, in the influence of various con- 
ditions of animated organisms, " the only known cause of 
divergence of structure." Classification reveals to us these 
divergences. We have, then, the bond of resemblances 
which indicate propinquity of descent, and the divergences 
of structure produced by varying conditions of life. Put 
the two together, and we have remarkable harmonies of 
likenesses obscured by unlikenesses ; and to this state of 
facts it is claimed that no consistent interpretation can be 
given, without the hjrpothesis that the likenesses and the 
unlikenesses were produced by the evolution of organisms 
out of organisms by successive generation, through a great 
lapse of time. 

This argument contains no inconsiderable amount of as- 
sumption. While it may be true that some naturalists do 
not assign any cause for the similarity which obtains among 
organic beings excepting their descent from a common ances- 
tral stock, it is not true that the similarity of structure is 
inconsistent with the hypothesis of another cause, namely, 
the adoption of a general plan of structure for a large class 
of organisms, and an intentional variation in those parts of 
structure which mark the divisions of that class into species 
that are very unlike. It is true that evolutionists treat with 
scorn the idea of a pattern of structure followed throughout 
a class of animals, but made by designed adaptations to 



THE TWENTY-SEGMENTS ILLUSTRATION. 205 

coalesce with differences that mark the peculiarities which 
distinguish one organism of that class from all the others. 
Mr. Spencer, for example, observes that " to say that the 
Creator followed a pattern throughout, merely for the pur- 
pose of maintaining the pattern, is to assign a motive which, 
if avowed by a human being, we should call whimsical." 

Let us now follow this mode of disposing of the hypoth- 
esis of special creations, by adverting to some of the facts 
that are adduced in its summary condemnation ; and, al- 
though the passage which I am about to quote is found in 
Mr. Spencer's work under the head of morphology, the 
illustration applies equally well to his argument from classi- 
fication. Speaking of fundamental likenesses of structure, 
he says : "Under the immensely varied forms of insects, 
greatly elongated like the dragon-fly, or contracted in 
shape like the lady-bird, winged like the butterfly, or 
wingless like the flea, we find this character in common — 
there are primarily twenty segments. These segments may 
be distinctly marked, or they may be so fused as to make it 
difficult to find the divisions between them. This is not 
all. It has been shown that the same number of segments 
is possessed by all the Crustacea, The highly consolidated 
crab, and the squilla with its long, loosely- jointed divisions, 
are composed of the same number of somites. Though, in 
the higher crustaceans, some of these successive indurated 
rings, forming the exo-skeleton, are never more than par- 
tially marked off from each other, yet they are identifia- 
ble as homologous with segments, which, in other crustace- 
ans, are definitely divided. What, now, can be the mean- 
ing of this community of structure among these hundreds 
of thousands of species filling the air, burrowing in the 
earth, swimming in the water, creeping about among the 
sea-weed, and having such enormous differences of size, 
outline, and substance, as that no community would be 
suspected between them ? Why, under the down-covered 



206 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

body of the moth and under the hard wing-cases of the 
beetle, should there be discovered the same number of di- 
visions as in the calcareous framework of the lobster ? 
It can not be by chance that there exist just twenty seg- 
ments in all these hundreds of thousands of species. There 
is no reason to think it was necessary, in the sense that no 
other number would have made a possible organism. And 
to say that it is the result of design — to say that the Crea- 
tor followed this pattern throughout, merely for the pur- 
pose of maintaining the pattern — is to assign a motive 
which, if avowed by a human being, we should call whim- 
sical. No rational interpretation of this, and hosts of like 
morphological truths, can be given except by the hypothe- 
sis of evolution ; and from the hypothesis of evolution 
they are corollaries. If organic forms have arisen from 
common stocks by perpetual divergences and rediver- 
gences — if they have continued to inherit, more or less 
clearly, the characters of ancestral races, then there will 
naturally result these communities of fundamental struct- 
ure among extensive assemblages of creatures, that have 
severally become modified in countless ways and degrees, 
in adaptation to their respective modes of life. To this 
let it be added that, while the belief in an intentional 
adhesion to a predetermined pattern throughout a whole 
group is totally negatived by the occurrence of occasional 
deviations from the pattern, such deviations are reconcil- 
able with the belief in evolution. As pointed out in the 
last chapter, there is reason to think that remote ancestral 
traits will be obscured more or less according as the super- 
posed modifications of structure have or have not been 
great or long maintained. Hence, though the occurrence 
of articulate animals, such as spiders and mites, having 
fewer than twenty segments, is fatal to the supposition 
that twenty segments was decided on for the three groups 
of superior Articulata, it is not incongruous with the 



VALUES OF A GIVEN PATTERN. 207 

supposition that some primitive races of articulate animals 
bequeathed to these three groups this common typical char- 
acter — a character which has nevertheless, in many cases, 
become greatly obscured, and in some of the most aberrant 
orders of these classes quite lost." * 

^f Whatever may be the explanation suggested by one or 
another hypothesis as to the mode in which this uniformity 
of structure came to exist, it is certain that it does exist. 
Twenty segments are found in hundreds of thousands of 
species which are immensely different from each other in 
size, outline, substance and modes of existence. Here, then, 
is a plan. There is a pattern, on which all these different 
organisms are constructed with a common peculiarity. It 
is averred that this could not have been the result of design, 
because this would be to impute to the Creator a whimsical 
motive, namely, that he followed the pattern throughout 
a vast group of different organisms merely for the purpose 
of following it. On the contrary, it may be contended 
that this uniformity of plan, this repeated pattern, affords 
the highest probable evidence of design ; and that the 
supposed whimsicality of motive will entirely disappear as 
soon as we reach a purpose which may have had very solid 
reasons for this uniformity of structure. > When we reason 
about the works of the Creator, we are reasoning about the 
methods of a being who, we must suppose, is governed by a 
purpose in all that he does. In reasoning about the meth- 
ods of such a being, it is entirely unphilosophical to suppose 
that he has done anything merely for the sake of doing it, 
or for the sake of exercising or displaying his powers in 
repetitions that had no practical value. In order to reason 
consistently with the supposed attributes of the Creator, 
we should endeavor to find the value of any given pattern 
which we discover in a certain very large class of organisms 
differing widely from each other in other respects ; and in 

* "Biology," i, pp. 3S0-382. 



208 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

order to find that value it is by no means essential to make 
out that the particular plan of construction was necessary 
to the making of any organism whatever. The true ques- 
tion is, not whether twenty segments were necessary to the 
construction of any organism, but whether, in each of the 
different species, this peculiar number of divisions was use- 
ful to each particular organism. If naturalists of the evo- 
lution school, instead of looking at everything through 
the medium of a certain theory, would in their dissection, 
for example, of the framework of the lobster, the body of 
the moth, and the body of the beetle, furnish us with facts 
which would show that these twenty divisions are of no use 
either for strength, or resistance, or suppleness, or adapta- 
tion to what is contained within them, we should have a 
body of evidence that could be claimed as tending to over- 
throw the hypothesis of intentional design. They might 
then speak of the repetition of this pattern as whimsical, 
upon the hypothesis that it was a repetition by design. But 
so little is done by this class of naturalists to give due con- 
sideration to the value of such repetitions, and so little heed 
is paid to the truth that the Creator does nothing that is 
useless — a truth which all sound philosophy must assume, 
because it is a necessary corollary from the attributes of the 
Creator — that we are left without the aid which we might 
expect from these specialists in natural science. Is it, then, 
impossible to discover, or even to suggest, that for each of 
these organisms this number of twenty divisions had a 
value ? If they were of no value, we may safely conclude 
that they would never have existed, unless we ignore the 
hypothesis of infinite wisdom and skill. That hypothesis 
is a postulate without which we can not reason on the case 
at all. With it, we have as a starting-point the conception 
of a being of infinite perfections, who does nothing idly, 
nothing from whim, nothing from caprice, and nothing 
that is without value to the creature in which it is found. 



INFINITY OF CHANCES AGAINST THE THEORY. 209 

So that, while we can not in all cases as yet assign that 
value, we have the strongest reasons for believing that 
there is a value ; and, instead of asserting that an extensive 
community of structure throughout a great branch of the 
animal kingdom has no meaning excepting upon the doc- 
trine of evolution, it is the part of true science to assume 
that it may have another meaning, and to discover if pos- 
sible what that other meaning is. This is the part of true 
science, because it is the part of sound philosophy. There 
is another remark to be made upon Mr. Spencer's reason- 
ing on this particular case of a community of pattern. 
He says that it can not be imputed to chance. It was, then, 
either an intentional design, or it came about through the 
process of descent *^from common stocks, which process 
was at the same time producing perpetual divergences and 
redivergences." Without turning aside for the present to 
ask from how many common stocks, it may be shown as 
in the highest degree probable that the occasional deviations 
from the pattern did not arise by the evolution process, be- 
cause that process has in itself an element of chance which is 
fatal to the theory. The assertion is that ** an intentional 
adhesion to a predetermined plan throughout a whole group 
is totally negatived by the occurrence of occasional devia- 
tions from the pattern." Let this assertion be examined first 
in the light of facts, and secondly by the absence of facts. 

The hypothesis is that some primitive race of articulated 
animals, possessed by some means of the twenty segments, 
transmitted this ancestral trait to hundreds of thousands of 
species having no community of structure in other respects. 
Unfortunately for the theory, no figures can measure the 
chances against the preservation of a single pattern through 
such a multitude of differing organisms descending from 
a common stock. Infinity alone can express the chances 
against such a result. While, according to the theory, the 
deviations from the original type were constantly working 



210 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

out new organisms of the most diversified forms, until there 
came to be hundreds of thousands of new species differing 
from each other in all but this one peculiarity — a diversity 
which is supposed to have been caused by the fundamental 
law of evolution — ^how did it happen that the same law did 
not break this uniformity of articulation ? If it was potent 
enough to differentiate the enormous multitude of these 
animals in all other traits, why did it not vary the number of 
segments with which the primitive race was endowed ? Is 
the law of evolution limited or unlimited ? If it is limited in 
its effects, then there are patterns of animal structure which 
it has not modified, and the presence of which in hundreds 
of thousands of different species must be explained as a 
form of structure designed for some end that was to be com- 
mon to a great multitude of different beings. If the law of 
evolution was unlimited in its power, then the community 
of pattern has had to undergo chances of destruction or 
discontinuance that are immeasurable ; as there can be no 
measure which will represent to the mind the infinitely 
diversified and innumerable causes that have produced the 
dissimilarities which compel a classification into the differ- 
ent species, upon the hypothesis of their descent from a 
common stock. Grant, too, for the purpose of the argu- 
ment, that the occasional deviations from the pattern of 
twenty segments, producing a few groups with a smaller 
number of articulations, are reconcilable with the belief that 
some later ancestral form became endowed with the smaller 
number which it transmitted to its descendants. How 
came that later ancestral form to be endowed with the 
smaller number of segments ? Was there a still more re- 
mote ancestral race, which in some way became possessed 
of the smaller number, or did the spiders and the mites, in 
the countless generations of evolution, branch off from an- 
cestral races having the full number of twenty segments ? 
Upon either supposition, what an infinity of chances there 



COMMON ANCESTRAL STOCK. 211 

were, against the natural selection of the smaller number, 
and against its preservation as the unvarying type of ar- 
ticulation found in the spiders and the mites ! The sup- 
position that the number of twenty segments was decided 
on for the three groups of superior Articulata for the mere 
sake of adhering to a pattern is doubtless unphilosophical. 
But it is not unphilosophical to suppose that whatever 
amount of articulation is found in each species was given 
to it because in that species it would be useful. If in some 
of the most aberrant orders of these animals the articula- 
tion is greatly obscured, or not found at all, the conclusion 
that it was not needed, or not needed in a like degree, is 
far more rational than the theory which commits the par- 
ticular result to an infinity of chances against it ; or which 
supposes it to have been worked by a process that might 
have produced a very different result, since it can not be 
claimed that natural selection works by methods of which 
any definite result can be predicated more than another. 

Thus far I have considered Mr. Spencer's argument 
from the Articulata in the light of the facts that he adduces. 
Let us now test it by the absence of facts. In a former 
discussion, I have asked for facts which show, aside from 
the theory, that any one species of animal, distinctly 
marked as a continuing type, is connected by intermediate 
types or forms with any pre-existing race of another char- 
acter. Take this class of the articulated animals, said to 
be of hundreds of thousands of different species having no 
community of form but this of articulation, and now known 
as perfect organisms, each after its kind. What natural- 
ist has discovered the continuity of lives with lives, which 
would furnish the steps of descent of any one of this spe- 
cies from an antecedent and a different species ? It is 
very easy to construct a theory, and from it to argue that 
there must have been intermediate links, which, if discov- 
ered, would show the continuity of lives from lives which 



212 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

the descent of one organism from another necessarily im- 
plies. To a certain extent, within certain limits, the sub- 
groups and the sub-sub-groups of the articulated class of 
animals, which classification or morphology reveals, may 
lay the foundation for a theoretical belief in an ancestral 
stock from which the different and now perfect forms of 
these distinct animals may haye become developed by suc- 
cessive changes of structure. But the extent to which 
connected changes can be actually traced in the animal 
kingdom is extremely limited ; and the important practi- 
cal question is whether any one fact, or class of facts, has 
been discovered which will warrant the belief that beings of 
totally dissimilar forms and habits of life have, without any 
design, been evolved by the ordinary process of successive 
generation, through the operation of causes that have grad- 
ually modified the structure in all respects save one, and 
have at the same time enabled or allowed that one peculiar- 
ity of structure to escape from the influences which have 
modified both structure and modes of life in every other re- 
spect. Why, for example, upon the hypothesis of descent 
from a common stock, has that stock deviated under the 
influences of natural selection into the lobster, the moth, 
and the beetle, and yet the community of twenty segments 
of articulation has entirely escaped the effect of those influ- 
ences ? No reason can be assigned for the fact that it has 
escaped those influences, excepting that it was originally 
designed, and was impressed upon the pro to-typical stock 
with such force as to place it beyond the reach of all such 
causes of modification as those which are ascribed to natural 
or sexual selection. Without the latter supposition, those 
causes were just as potent to bring about a modification in 
the number of articulations as they were to bring about 
all the astonishing diversities of structure and modes of 
life that we see, and therefore the most probable conclusion 
from the fact of this uniformity of the twenty segments is. 



DESIGN MUST BE INEERRED. 213 

that there was a barrier placed in this whole class of organ- 
isms, which has limited the modifying force of the sup- 
posed process of evolution, for the reason of some peculiar 
utility in this plan of articulation. 

Perhaps it will be said that the process of evolution it- 
self tends to the preservation of whatever is most useful, 
while the modifications are going on which develop new 
organs and new structures ; and that thus, in the case be- 
fore us, the twenty segments have been preserved through- 
out an enormous group by one of the fundamental laws of 
evolution, so that, if there is any peculiar utility in the 
twenty segments, that utility has been answered by the 
very process of gradual descent of one organism from an- 
other. But the difficulty with this reasoning is, that while 
it assumes for the modifying influences of natural and 
sexual selection a range of fortuitous causes sufficient to 
change the ancestral type into the acquisition of vastly 
diversified organs, powers, and modes of existence, so as to 
constitute new animals, it yet assumes that, by some recog- 
nition of a superior and paramount utility in the particular 
number of segments, the law of evolution has preserved 
that number from the influence of causes which have 
changed everything else. Now, the range of causes which 
was sufficiently varied, accidental, long-continued and com- 
plex to produce the diversities of structure in all other 
respects, by the infinitely modifying influences which have 
developed new organs and new modes of existence, must 
also have been of a sufficiently varied, accidental, long-con- 
tinued, and complex character to have broken this plan 
of the twenty segments, unless we suppose that in some 
mysterious and inexplicable manner the different genera- 
tions of these beings were endowed with some kind of 
sagacity which would enable them to strive for the preserva- 
tion of this one peculiarity, or unless we suppose that Na- 
ture was ever on the watch to guard them from its destruc- 



214: CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

tion or variation, on account of its peculiar utility. The 
first supposition is not in accordance with the evolution 
theory ; for that theory rejects all idea of conscious exer- 
tion on the part of any of the organisms. The second sup- 
position leads us at once to the inquiry, how came it to be 
imposed upon a whole group of beings as a law of nature, 
that whatever utility of structure was of paramount im- 
portance to the whole group should be preserved against 
the modifying influences that were to produce species dif- 
fering absolutely from each other, through hundreds of 
thousands of varieties, in every other feature of their exist- 
ence ? Can we get along here without the hypothesis of 
design ? And, if there was such design, how does the fact 
of this uniformity amid such diversity become an argument 
against the hypothesis of a Creator ? Or, how does it tend 
to displace the hypothesis of special creations, when we 
find that the very process of so-called evolution has failed 
to break the uniformity of a pattern that is conceded not 
to have been the result of chance, although that pattern 
was exposed to just as many and as powerful causes of 
modification as those which are assumed to have brought 
about the modifications in every other feature of the ani- 
mal existence ? The truth would seem to be, that the 
uniformity amid so great a diversity was either the result 
of a design which placed it out of the reach of all the 
modifying influences, or else it has, by a most incalculable 
result, escaped from the effect of those influences by a 
chance in which the ratio of one to infinity can alone meas- 
ure the probability of such an escape. 

Let us now advert to another of Mr. Spencer's illustra- 
tions of the futility of the '^supernatural" and of the 
rationality of the "natural" interpretation.* This illus- 

* I use these terms with quotation-marks, because I do not admit any 
philosophical antagonism such as they are intended to imply. 



THE ILLUSTRATIO]^ OF THE SACRUM. 215 

tration is derived from what are called "homologous" or- 
gans ; and the particular instance selected is the vertebral 
column.* There are creatures, such as snakes, a low order 
of the vertebrate kingdom, in which the bony axis is divid- 
ed into segments of about the same dimensions from end to 
end, for the obvious advantage of flexibility throughout the 
whole length of the animal. But in most of the higher 
vertebrata, some parts of this axis are flexible and others 
• are inflexible ; and this is especially the case in that part of 
the vertebral column called the sacrum, which is the ful- 
crum that has to bear the greatest strain to which the skele- 
ton is exposed, and which is yet made not of one long seg- 
ment or vertebra, but of several segments "fused together." 
Mr. Spencer says : "In man there are five of these conflu- 
ent sacral vertebrae ; and in the ostrich tribe they number 
from seventeen to twenty. "Why is this ? Why, if the 
skeleton of each species was separately contrived, was this 
bony mass made by soldering together a number of vertebrae 
like those forming the rest of the column, instead of being 
made out of one single piece ? And why, if typical uni- 
formity was to be maintained, does the number of sacral 
vertebras vary within the same order of birds ? Why, too, 
should the development of the sacrum be the roundabout 
process of first forming its separate constituent vertebrae, and 
then destroying their separativeness ? In the embryo of a 
mammal or bird, the substance of the vertebral column is, at 
the outset, continuous. The segments that are to become 
vertebrae, arise gradually in the midst of this originally ho- 

* " Homology " is defined by lexicographers as " the doctrine of similar 
parts." " Homologous organs " is a term used by scientific writers to de- 
scribe organs having a relation of some proportion to each other. In this 
particular case of the vertebral column, the different parts of the column 
are treated as if they were different organs, and they are said to be homolo- 
gous organs in the same animal, because they bear a certain relation or 
ratio of proportion to each other. 



216 CREATIOlsr OR EVOLUTION? 

mogeneous axis. Equally in those parts of the spine which 
are to remain flexible, and in those which are to grow rigid, 
these segments are formed, and that part of the spine which 
is to compose the sacrum, haying passed out of its original 
unity into disunity by separating itself into segments, 
passes again into unity by the coalescence of these segments. 
To what end is this construction and reconstruction ? If, 
originally, the spine in vertebrate animals consisted from 
head to tail of separate movable segments, as it does still in 
fishes and some reptiles — ^if, in the evolution of the higher 
vertebrata, certain of these movable segments were ren- 
dered less movable with respect to each other, by the me- 
chanical conditions to which they were exposed, and at 
length became relatively immovable — it is comprehensible 
why the sacrum formed out of them should continue ever 
after to show more or less clearly its originally segmented 
structure. But on any other hypothesis this segmented 
structure is inexplicable." 

We here see the predominating force of a theory which 
refuses all possible rationality to any hypothesis but its 
own. The confident tone with which facts are arrayed and 
are then pronounced inexplicable upon any other hypothe- 
sis than that which the writer asserts, without one scintilla 
of proof of their tendency to exclude every other supposi- 
tion, renders the refutation of such reasoning a wearisome 
task. But there is here one plain and sufficient answer to 
the whole of the supposed difiiculty. The evolution theory, 
in this particular application of it, is that originally there 
were vertebrate animals in which the sj)ine consisted of 
separate movable segments ^rom head to tail, as it does now 
in fishes and reptiles ; but, as the higher vertebrata were 
evolved out of these lower forms, the movable segments 
were rendered less movable with respect to each other, and 
at length in the sacrum the segments became relatively im- 
movable, and yet the originally segmented structure was 



DESIGN OF THE SACRUM. 217 

retained in this part of the column, by force of the pro- 
pinquity of descent from an antecedent type which had 
the whole column divided into movable segments. Upon 
no other hypothesis, it is asserted, is this result explicable. 
Mr. Spencer's analysis of the sacrum is somewhat de- 
fective. It is, as he says, that part of the vertebrate column 
which in the higher class of vertebrate animals is, during 
foetal life, composed, like all the rest of the column, of dis- 
tinct vertebrae. These vertebrae, like the others, are flexible 
in the foetal stage, but after birth they become coalesced 
or united into one piece, instead of remaining in separate 
pieces. Thus far, Mr. Spencer's description is, I am in- 
formed by anatomists, correct. But the questions which 
he propounds as if they were unanswerable upon the as- 
sumption that this change is inexplicable upon any other 
hypothesis than that of the evolution of the higher verte- 
brata out of the lower vertebrate animals, and that the 
sacrum, with its continuous piece, has retained the seg- 
mented outward form by force of the descent, demand 
closer consideration. Let us trace the process of formation 
In the human species, and then see what is the just con- 
clusion to be derived from it. In the embryonic condi- 
tion, the substance which is to form the vertebral column 
is continuous. As the foetus is developed, this substance 
separates itself into the segments which are called vertebrae, 
and these segments remain flexible and movable throughout 
the column. After birth, the five lower segments become 
united in what is substantially one piece, but of course the 
marks of the original segments remain. This is what oc- 
curs in the origin and growth of the individual. Now, 
looking back to the period when this species of animal did 
not exist, and supposing it to have been specially created in 
the two related forms of male and female, endowed with 
the same process of procreation and gestation that has been 
going on ever since there is any recorded or traditionary 



218 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

knowledge of the race, why should not this very growth of 
the sacrum have been designed, in order to produce, after 
the birth of the individual, that relative rigidity which 
would in this part of the vertebral column be useful to an 
animal destined to an upright posture of the whole skeleton 
and to the habits and life of a biped ? And, if we extend the 
inquiry to other species, why should we not expect to find, 
as in the case of an oviparous vertebrate like the ostrich, 
a repetition of the same general plan of forming the spinal 
column, for the same ultimate purpose, with such a varia- 
tion in the number of original segments that are to consti- 
tute the sacrum as would be most useful to that bird, thus 
establishing for the ostrich a sacrum that in a reptile or a 
fish would not only not be required, but would be a positive 
incumbrance ? Upon the hypothesis of special creations of 
the different species of vertebrate animals, every one of Mr. 
Spencer's questions, asked as if they were unanswerable, can 
receive a satisfactory solution. Thus, he asks, " Why, if the 
skeleton of each species was separately contrived, was this 
bony mass [the sacrum] made by soldermg together a num- 
ber of vertebrae like those forming the rest of the column, 
instead of being made [aboriginally] in one single piece ? " 
The answer is, that in the establishment of the process of 
gestation and fcBtal growth, if a human artificer and de- 
signer could have devised the process, he would have se- 
lected the very one that now exists, for certain obvious 
reasons. Eirst, he would have designedly made the process 
to consist, in the embryo, of a division of the substance 
which was to form the vertebral column in a continuous 
and uniform division into segments, because the whole col- 
umn is to have at first the flexibility that may be derived 
from such a division. Secondly, when the time was to 
arrive at which the formation of the sacrum, with its 
practical continuity of a single piece, was to commence, he 
would select the number of the lower vertebrae that would 



TYPICAL UNIFORMITY. 219 

make a sacrum most useful to the particular species of ani- 
mal, and would weld them together so as to give them the 
relative rigidity and action of a single piece. But as the 
whole formation is the result of a growth of the sacrum 
out of a part of the slowly forming column originally 
divided into vertebrae, the marks of these separate vertebrae 
would remain distinguishable, while they would cease to 
have the mechanical action of separate vertebrae. 

Another of Mr. Spencer's questions is, ^^ Why, if typical 
uniformity was to be maintained, does the number of sacral 
vertebrae vary within the same order of birds ? " The an- 
swer is the same as that which assigns a reason for all other 
variations in the skeleton of animals of the same order but 
of different varieties, namely, the special utility of the 
variations in the number of sacral vertebrae that would be 
most useful in that variety. The typical uniformity main- 
tained is a uniformity in the process of growth and forma- 
tion, down to a point where the variations are to come in 
which mark one animal from another ; and I have more 
than once had occasion to suggest that the tjrpical uniform- 
ity, and its adaptation to the varying requirements of dif- 
ferent beings, is the highest kind of moral evidence of the 
existence, wisdom, and power of a supreme artificer, and 
that it militates so strongly against the doctrine of evolution 
that, without more proof than can possibly be claimed for 
that doctrine, we ought not to yield to it our belief. 

The theory that the original condition of all vertebrate 
animals was that of separate movable segments throughout 
the spinal column, as it is now in fishes and some reptiles, 
and that in the evolution of the higher vertebrates out of 
these lower forms, certain of these movable segments were 
rendered less movable with respect to each other by the me- 
chanical conditions to which the successive generations were 
exposed, until at length the sacrum was formed, is undoubt- 
edly a theory that excludes all design of an infinite artificer, 
11 



220 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

and all intention whatever. It is a theory which relegates 
the most special contrivances and the most exact adaptations 
to the fortuitous operation of causes that could not have 
produced the variations of structure and at the same time 
have preserved the typical uniformity. It is certainly a 
theory which we should not apply to the works of man, if 
we were investigating products which seemed to be the re- 
sult of human ingenuity and skill, but of the origin of 
which we had no direct evidence. In such a case, we 
should not shut our eyes to the proofs of intentional varia- 
tions and adaptation, or, if we did, our speculations would 
not be likely to command the assent of cultivated and 
sound reasoners. We may treat the works of Nature by a 
system of logic that we should not apply to the works of 
man, but if we do, we shall end In no tenable results. The 
principal and in fact the only essential distinction to be ob- 
served between the works of Nature and the works of man 
relates to the degree of power, intelligence, and skill in the 
actor. If we assume, as we must, that in the one case there 
was an actor, api)lying will, intelligence, and power to the 
properties of matter, and molding it into certain products 
and uses, and that in the other case there was no actor, 
but that all products and results are but the ungoverned 
effects of what are called natural laws in contradistinction 
to all intentional purposes, we must argue upon principles 
that are logically and diametrically inconsistent in them- 
selves, and at variance with fundamental laws of reasoning. 
I will now advert to an omission in Mr. Spencer's analy- 
sis of the sacrum, which overlooks one of the strongest 
proofs of intentional design afforded by that part of the 
spinal column. We have seen what was its general purpose 
and growth, and the process of its formation. We have now 
to note its variations in the male and the female skeleton. 
In the male, the sacrum, thus formed before birth, afterbirth 
answers to and performs its ultimate function of a compara- 



THE FEMALE SACRUM. 221 

tively rigid and inflexible piece of bone, and it is provided 
with no other special characteristic. In the female, on the 
contrary, there is a most remarkable adaptation of this piece 
to the function of maternity. While all the upper yertebras 
of which this piece was originally composed are welded to- 
gether after birth in the female as in the male, in the female 
the lowest segment of all remains for a certain time flexible 
relatively to the upper part of the sacrum, in order to admit 
of the necessary expansion of the pelvis during the passage 
of the infant from the womb of the mother. In the normal 
condition of females of all the vertebrate orders, this flexibil- 
ity of the lower part of the sacrum continues while the pe- 
riod of possible maternity continues. If in any individual 
female it happens to be wanting during the period of pos- 
sible conception, delivery can not take place without dan- 
ger to the mother or the offspring, or both. Hence, in 
very bad cases, nature has to be assisted by extraordinary 
means. But in the normal condition of the female sacrum, 
this flexibility, so essential in the process of safe delivery, 
is always found, and its special purpose is known to every 
anatomist, while it has no existence in the structure of the 
male. Is this distinction to be accounted for by the same 
kind of reasoning that undertakes to account for all the 
other great distinctions between the related forms of male 
and female, which reproduce their kind by a common pro- 
cess of the sexual union, namely, that this division of male 
and female came about by a habit that resulted now in the 
production of a male and now in the production of a fe- 
male, from tendencies that were ungoverned by any special 
purpose ? Must we not conclude, however inscrutable are 
the causes that determine the sex of a particular infant, 
that the sexes themselves were specially ordained ? And if 
they were specially ordained, how are we to account for the 
special construction and function of each of them, without 
the interposition of a special design ? And when we find 



222 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

a structure in the female obviously designed for a special 
purpose, and not existing in the male, are we to conclude that 
some particular race of females, in some remote period of 
antiquity, among the countless generations of the verte- 
brata, found that this flexibility of the sacrum would be 
highly convenient to them, and, having adopted it as a 
habit, transmitted it, as a specially acquired peculiarity of 
structure, to their female descendants ? This is all very well 
as a theoretical speculation, but as a si^eculation it is entire- 
ly defective, because it assigns the peculiarity of structure 
to a cause that could not have produced it. On the other 
hand, the hypothesis of its special creation assigns it to a 
cause that could have produced it, and its existence is 
among the highest of the multitudinous evidences of inten- 
tional design and special formation. 

Wherein consists the irrationality of the hypothesis that 
a plan of construction was intentionally, and with supreme 
skill, framed for very different beings, to answer in each of 
them a common purpose ? The asserted irrational charac- 
ter of this hypothesis consists in nothing but a denial that 
there was a Creator. It comes down to this, if it comes to 
anything : because, if we assume that there was a Supreme 
Being who took any care whatever of the complex and 
manifold product that we call nature — if we suppose that 
he ordained anything — we must suppose that his power to 
construct was boundless, and that a repetition of his plans 
wherever they would be useful, to answer the beneficent 
and diversified ends of infinite skill and benevolence, is 
just as much in accordance with the whole hypothesis of 
his attributes as it is to suppose that he caused anything 
whatever to exist. If we deny his existence, if we can not 
satisfy ourselves of it at all, if we suppose that nothing was 
ordained, nothing was created, but that all these diversi- 
fied forms of animal organisms grew out of a protoplasmic 
substance, and that there was never any absolute commence- 



HOW SPECIAL CREATION IS TO BE VIEWED. 223 

ment of organic life on tlie globe, or any absolute com- 
mencement of anything whatever, it is of course idle to 
speculate upon the adoption or preservation of patterns, as 
it is equally idle to pursue the theory of evolution through 
stages which at last end nowhere whatever.* 

It may be well to cite Mr. Spencer's final summary of 
the general truths which he claims to be revealed by mor- 
phology, because it will enable the reader to see just where 
the logical inconsequence of his position occurs : " The 
general truths of morphology thus coincide in their im- 
plications. Unity of type, maintained under extreme dis- 
similarities of form and mode of life, is explicable as re- 
sulting from descent with modification ; but is otherwise 
inexplicable. The likenesses disguised by unlikenesses, 
which the comparative anatomist discovers between vari- 
ous organs in the same organisms, are worse than mean- 
ingless if it be supposed that organisms were severally 
formed as we now see them ; but they fit in quite harmoni- 
ously with the belief that each kind of organism is a product 
of accumulated modifications upon modifications. And the 
presence, in all kinds of animals and plants, of functionally 
useless parts corresponding to parts that are functionally 
useful in allied animals and plants, while it is totally incon- 
gruous with the belief in a construction of each organism by 
miraculous interposition, is just what we are led to expect 
by the belief that organisms have arisen by progression." f 

Without expending much criticism upon the phrase 
*' miraculous interposition," as a description of what takes 
place in special creation, it is sufficient to say that the act 
of special creation of a distinct organism is to be first viewed 
by itself, as if it stood alone in nature, and that it is like 
any other act of causing a new thing to exist which did not 

* See the discussion of how evolution works, post. 
f "Biology," i, p. 387. 



224 CKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

exist before. To this idea should be added the fact that 
in the creation of an animal organism there is involved the 
direct formation of a peculiar type of animal, with a capaci- 
ty of producing other individuals of the same type through 
a process of generation. When, after having attained this 
conception of the act of special creation, and contemplated 
a single instance of the supposed exercise of such a power, 
we extend our inquiries, we find many other instances of 
the exercise of the same power ; and then we observe a cer- 
tain unity of type in some peculiarity of structure, main- 
tained under extreme dissimilarities of form and mode of 
life. How, then, is this one similarity of pattern, amid 
such multiformity in other respects, " worse than meaning- 
less," if we suppose that '^organisms were severally framed 
as we now see them" ? The very hypothesis that they 
were so severally framed carries in itself a meaning which 
can not be thus summarily ignored ; because that hypoth- 
esis implies a power in the Creator to do just what we see. 
You may deny the power ; but if you admit the existence 
of the infinite creating power, you are remitted to the in- 
quiry into its probable methods ; and you can no more say 
that the special creation of distinct organisms, with a cer^ 
tain unity amid a great multiformity, leaves the whole 
phenomena without a meaning, than you can say that any 
method which you can suggest is necessarily the only meth- 
od which will afford a rational meaning in what we see. 
You must go the length of denying the entire postulate of 
a Creator, before you can be in a situation to deny the 
meaning that is involved in the idea of creation ; for that 
idea implies an absolute power to apply a uniform pattern 
of structure to a whole class of organisms varied in all oth- 
er respects. The theory that each kind of organism is a 
product of accumulated modifications upon modifications, 
without any special interposition to produce the modified 
and distinct forms, must be maintained on one of two sup- 



POSSIBILITY OF SPECIAL CREATION". 225 

positions : either that at some period there was an absolute 
commencement of organic life in some form, upon this 
globe, and that then all the other forms which we see were 
left to be evolved out of that one by the ungoverned ac- 
cumulation of modifications upon modifications, or else 
that there was never any absolute commencement of organic 
life at any time, but that matter, by some peculiar property 
derived from some source that is not suggested, took on 
combinations which resulted in some crude form of ani- 
mated organism, and that then the accumulations of modi- 
fications upon modifications followed from some process 
of generation by which the successive organisms became 
multiplied and varied. Of the former supposition, I un- 
derstand Mr. Darwin to have been a representative natu- 
ralist. Of the latter, I understand Mr. Spencer to be an 
advocate. /^Upon what may be called the Darwinian doc- 
trine, the idea of a Creator, causing to exist at some time 
some crude form of animal life, is admitted. Upon the 
Spencerian doctrine, which will be in this respect more 
closely examined hereafter, I do not see that the idea of a 
creating power comes in anywhere, either at the commence- 
ment of a series of organisms or at any point in that series. < 
But, upon the logical proposition asserted in the passage last 
above quoted, it is obvious that, unless the idea of a Creator 
is absolutely denied, the presence of a unity of type amid any 
amount of dissimilarities of form and mode of life can not 
be pronounced to be without meaning, because the idea of 
a Creator implies a power to make that very unity amid the 
uniformity, which is asserted to be inexplicable without re- 
sorting to the theory that it was not made at all, but that 
it grew out of events over which no superintending or gov- 
erning power was exercised. Upon this kind of dogmatic 
assertion there can be no common ground of reasoning. 

The assumed incongruity between the facts and the 
hypothesis of a special creation of each organism is an in- 



226 CREATIOiT OR EVOLUTION? 

congruity that arises out of the assumption that such spe- 
cial creation was an impossibility. If once the idea of an 
infinite creating faculty is assumed as the basis of the rea- 
soning, all seeming incongruity vanishes, and the probable 
method of that creating power must be determined by the 
preponderence of evidence. If the power is denied, we 
must grope our way through systems which impute every- 
thing to the properties of substance, without any sugges- 
tion of a source from which those properties were derived, 
and without anything to guide them but the tendencies 
implanted in them, we know not how or when, and of the 
origin of which we have not even a suggestion. Some of 
the speculations of Greek philosophers adverted to in a 
previous chapter may serve to show us what comes of the 
omission to conceive of power as abstracted from substance 
or its properties. The philosophy which first attained to 
this conception led the way to that conception of an Infinite 
Being, without whose existence and attributes all specula- 
tion upon the phenomena of nature leads to nothing. A 
belief in his existence and attributes must undoubtedly be 
attained by an examination of his works, if we set aside the 
teachings of revealed religion. But if we can not attain it, 
we have no better means for believing in the doctrine of 
evolution than we have for believing in any other method by 
which the phenomena of nature have become what they are. 
The question here is, not whether descent of organ- 
isms from organisms, with modifications upon modifications, 
is a supposable theory, but whether it is so satisfactorily 
shown that it can be said to exclude the hypothesis of a 
special creation of each organism. There may be parts of 
structure in one animal which seem to have no functional 
use, although we should be cautious in making the assump- 
tion that they are of no use because we have not yet dis- 
covered that use. But let it be assumed that these apjoar- 
ently useless parts in one animal correspond to parts which 



LIMITS OF MODIFICATION. 227 

in another animal are functionally useful. If there was 
established for these two separately created animals a like 
system of procreation and gestation, that system, affected 
at the same time by a law of growth imposed by the special 
type of the species, might in one species lead to the pres- 
ence of parts of which we can not recognize the use, and 
might in other species lead to the presence of parts of 
which we can see the use. It does not help to a better ex- 
planation to say that there has been an accumulation of 
modifications upon modifications in the course of an un- 
known descent of one organism from another. Why did 
these modifications stop short of the production of a species 
or of several species in which no resemblance of parts 
more or less functionally useful could be found ? The 
supposition is that the modifications have been going on 
through millions of years. Time enough, therefore, has 
elapsed for the destruction of all uniformity of structure ; 
and tlie causes of modification are as immeasurable as the 
period through which they are supposed to have been 
operating. The imaginary ancestral stock, wherever it is 
placed in the line of remote descent, had, in its first dis- 
tinctive existence, a peculiar structure, which it bequeaths 
to its offspring. In the countless generations of its de- 
scendants, modifications of that structure take place, until 
a new animal is evolved. What preserved any unity of 
type from the modifying influences ? It was not choice 
on the part of the several descending species ; not a con- 
scious exertion to preserve something ; it was nothing but 
the propinquity of descent, which by the law of heredity 
transmitted certain resemblances. But why was that law 
so potent that it could preserve a certain unity of type, and 
at the same time so powerless as not to prevent the modifi- 
cations which the successive organisms have undergone in 
all other respects ? Or, to reverse the terms of the ques- 
tion, why were the causes of modification sufficiently 



228 OREATIOIT OR EVOLUTION? 

powerful to produce distinct species, and yet not powerful 
enough to eliminate the resemblances which we find obtain- 
ing throughout the whole group of animals to which these 
several species belong ? It would seem that here we are not 
to lose sight of the fact that, in the animal kingdom, pro- 
creation never takes place between a male and a female of 
distinct species, and that we have no reason to believe that 
it ever did take place. Now, although the evolution hy- 
pothesis supposes that, starting from an ancestral stock, 
the modifications of structure have been produced in off^ 
spring descended from parents of that same stock, which 
have transmitted acquired peculiarities to their immediate 
progeny, and so on indefinitely, yet there must have been 
a time when the diverging species became distinct and pe- 
culiar organisms, and when it became impossible for any 
crossing of these organisms to take place. All the supposed 
modifications, therefore, have taken place within the limits 
of an actual descent of one kind of animal from another, 
each successive pair belonging to the species from which 
they were individually generated. In this descent of lives 
from lives, there came about changes which in progress of 
time led to two animals as wide asunder as the man and 
the ostrich, or as the man and the horse, and yet the causes 
which were powerful enough to produce these widely di- 
verging species were not powerful enough to break up all 
unity of plan in some one or more respects. If natural- 
ists of the evolution school would explain how there has 
come to be, for example, in the skeleton of the vertehrata, 
a bony structure called the spine, in which a certain resem- 
blance and a certain function obtain throughout the whole 
class, and yet one species creeps upon its belly, another 
walks on four legs, and another on two, and one flies in the 
air and another never can do so, and how this could be 
without any design or special interposition of a creating 
power, but that the whole of this uniformity amid such 



EMBEYOLOGY. 229 

diversity has arisen from acquired habits among the differ- 
ent descendants from an aboriginal stock that had no such 
habits in either mode of locomotion, and no organs for such 
modes of life, they would at least be able to commend their 
theory to a better "appreciation of its claims than is now 
possible to those who want '^grounds more relative " than 
a naked hypothesis. 

3. The argument from embryology requires for its ap- 
preciation a careful statement of its abstract proposition, 
and a statement of it in a concrete form. As an abstract 
proposition, embryology, or the comparison of the develop- 
ment of different organisms under their embryonic stages, 
shows that in the earliest stage of any organism it has 
the greatest number of characters in common with all 
other organisms in their earliest stage ; that at a later 
stage its structure is like the structures displayed at corre- 
sponding phases by a less extensive number of organisms ; 
that at each subsequent stage the developing embryo be- 
comes more and more distinguished from the groups of em- 
bryos that it previously resembled ; and that this divergence 
goes on, until we reach the species of which the embryo 
is a member, in which the class of similar forms is finally 
narrowed to that species. 

It seems that Yon Baer formulated this generalization 
of embryologic development into an ^'embryologic law," 
which, according to Mr. Spencer, becomes a support to the 
hypothesis of evolution in this way : Species that had a 
common ancestry will exhibit a parallelism in the embry- 
onic development of their individual members. As the 
embryos of the ancestral stock were developed in their 
growth, so the embryos of the descended species would be 
developed at corresponding phases in a similar way. As 
one species diverged from its ancestral stock, there would 
come about modifications in the development of its em- 
bryos, and thus a later ancestral stock would be formed, 



230 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

which would in turn transmit to its descendants in the de- 
velopment of the embryo less and less resemblances, and 
so on, until finally the individual animal, at birth, would 
structurally resemble only the individual infants of its own 
race. 

Here, then, is another remarkable instance of the force 
of an adopted theory. First, we have a comparison of the 
embryonic development of different animals from their 
seminal germs which displays certain phenomena of resem- 
blances and departures. Next, we have the assumption of 
an ancestral stock, the common origin of all the organisms 
in the development of whose embryos among its descend- 
ants an embryologic law was to work, starting from the 
visible resemblance of all the germs, then exhibiting struct- 
ural changes into later ancestral stocks, and soon, until 
the resemblances are reduced to those which obtain only 
among individuals of the same species. So that, without 
the hypothesis, the assumption of an ancestral stock of all 
the organisms, formed somehow in the coarse of descent 
from a germ that gave rise to an animal of some kind, we 
have nothing to which to apply the embryologic law. We 
are to infer the embryologic law from the parallelism of 
embryonic development which prevails in the whole series 
of animal generation, or from its divergences, or from both, 
and then we draw from this laiu the inference that the 
whole series of animals came from some common stock. 
The difficulty with this whole theory is, as I have more 
than once suggested, that we have no means, aside from the 
theory itself, of connecting lives with lives, in the genera- 
tion of one distinct species out of another. Without some 
proof of the fact that the human foetus was a diverging 
growth out of some ancestral stock that was the same as 
that from which the foetus of another animal was a differ- 
ent diverging growth, the embryologic law is no help to us 
whatever. If this kinship of the human foetus with the 



TRUE SCOPE OF SPECIAL CREATION". 231 

foetus of some other animal can not be found, by tracing 
the intermediate links which carry them respectively back 
to their common ancestor, between, what animals in re- 
spect to their embryonic development can such kinship be 
found, excepting upon the theoretical assumption of a com- 
mon origin of the whole vertebral class ? If there was such 
a common ancestral stock, where is it to be placed, what 
was its character, when did the law of embryologic develop- 
ment begin to operate upon its descendants ? Until some 
facts can be adduced which will have a satisfactory tend- 
ency to show the kinship of one animal with another by 
reason of ancestral descent from a common ancestral stock 
that was unlike either of them, the phenomena of embryo- 
logic development have no tendency to displace the hy- 
pothesis of special creations ; for, on the latter hypothesis, 
the phenomena of resemblances and differences in the 
growth from the germ into the foetus and from the foetus 
into the newly born infant, evinced by any range of com- 
parison of the different species, would be the same. If man 
was a special creation, and one of the higher quadrumana 
was also a distinct and separate creation, the establishment 
for each of a like process of procreation and gestation 
would produce all the resemblances of foetal growth that 
obtain between them, and the ordained differences of their 
animal destinies would explain all the divergences. Let us 
see if this is not a rational conclusion. 

It is exceedingly difiBcult for the common reader of such 
a work as that of Mr. Spencer, on which I am now com- 
menting, to avoid the influence of the perpetual assertion 
that facts are explicable upon one hypothesis alone. At 
each step in the argument, the array of facts terminates 
with the assertion that, upon the hypothesis of design, the 
facts are inexplicable ; and yet we are furnished with no 
reasoning that has a tendency to show that the facts neces- 
sarily exclude the hypothesis of design, or, in other words. 



232 CEEATION OR EYOLUTION? 

that the facts are inconsistent with that hypothesis. It is 
essential to understand what is the true scope of the hy- 
pothesis of special creation ; for, without a definite idea of 
what that term implies, we have no proper means of compar- 
ing the facts of animal resemblances or differences with the 
rationality of the hypothesis that they resulted from an in- 
tentional design. EecoUecting, then, that we are now pur- 
suing the resemblances and divergences that are found in a 
comparison of the embryologic development of different 
species of animals, let us endeavor to understand the mean- 
ing of what I have suggested at the close of the last pre- 
ceding paragraph ; namely, the establishment for a large 
class of animals of a like general system of procreation and 
gestation, and the ordination of different destinies for the dif- 
ferent species of animals belonging to that class. I have 
said that the two branches of this hypothesis would account 
for the resemblances in the embryological growth of differ- 
ent animals, and would explain the divergences which ob- 
tain among their embryological developments. The first 
inquiry is, whether this hypothesis presents a true philosophic 
idea of special creation. The next inquiry is, whether it 
affords a satisfactory explanation of the phenomena of com- 
parative embryologic development. 

We must never lose sight of the one grand postulate of 
an infinite Creator. This postulate must be conceded to 
the believers in special creations, because any idea of crea- 
tion implies a creating power. If we conceive of creation 
without a Creator, we must stop all argument. N'ow, the 
hypothesis of creation, as I have more than once said, im- 
plies a being of boundless faculties. There can be abso- 
lutely no limitation to the power of such a being, either in 
respect to the methods by which he will accomplish his 
objects, or to the number and variety of these objects, or to 
the purposes for which they are to exist. If we narrow our 
conception of creating power to anything less than an infi- 



PARALLEL EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT. 233 

nite faculty ; if we suppose it to be restricted in any direc- 
tion; if we argue about it as if there were things that it 
can not do, we shall be without the means of reasoning 
soundly upon anything that it is supposed to have done. 
It is quite otherwise when we are reasoning about the oper- 
ation and effect of secondary causes. There is no second- 
ary cause — no imaginable operation of a fixed quality of 
substance — no action of any of the properties of substance — 
that is not limited. The scope of its action may be very 
wide ; within its sphere it may be enormously potent ; but 
in its yery nature it is bounded.* It is not so with the First 
Cause of all things ; not so with the Infinite Power which, 
upon the hypothesis of a First Cause, has established all 
the physical laws of the universe and all the properties of 
matter. So that, when we reason about the methods of that 
infinite creating power, if we find a general system estab- 
lished, or a pattern repeated through a very large class of 
organisms, the proper inference is, not that the power was 
limited, but that it has been exercised to the whole extent 
of what was useful, and in that direction has been exercised 
no further ; and if we find variations or additional struct- 
ures incorporated with the repetition of a general pattern, 
the proper inference is that the unlimited creating power 
has put forth all the additional exertion and skill needful 
for the formation of new beings. 

What, then, does the establishment of a like system of 
procreation and gestation imply, upon the supposition of 
the distinct creation of species ? It implies a certain par- 
allel embryonic development, from the germ to the foetus 

* The Greek philosophers, as we have seen, before Plato and Aristotle, 
found that their systems of causes, which did not involve the idea of power 
as abstracted from substance, would not account for the phenomena of na- 
ture. With all their subtilty and ingenuity, they did not reach the truth 
that secondary causes are necessarily limited in their action, and that there 
must be an unlimited cause. * 



234: CKEATIOlSr OR EVOLUTION? 

and from the foetus to the new-born infant, throughont 
a large group of different animals ; and this parallelism 
would in certain stages of the embryonic growth display 
identity or close similarity of form and structure. But as 
in each species of animal the distinct creation would ne- 
cessarily imply a distinct destiny, the parallelism of em- 
bryonic form and structure would cease at the point of de- 
velopment at which the characteristic structure of the spe- 
cies would begin to unfold itself. The general system of 
procreation and gestation common to a whole class of dif- 
ferent animals, and the ordained diversity of species, would 
present the same phenomena of resemblances and differ- 
ences in the embryonic development that are supposed to 
be explicable only by the hypothesis of a descent of all the 
species from a common ancestral stock through the process 
of evolution. 

Notwithstanding the mystery and obscurity in which 
the process of animal procreation is involved — a mystery 
and obscurity which will perhaps never be fully solved — we 
can see enough to warrant some definite conclusions. One 
of these conclusions is that, in the formation of the germ 
which becomes developed into the foetus, the male and fe- 
male parent each contributes some cellular substance to the 
compound which constitutes that germ. We may safely 
infer this, because the individual animal becomes a union 
of characteristics belonging to both the parents, although 
the traits that are peculiar to one of the parents may be 
more or less marked in their different offspring, so that 
in one of the descendants the parental and in another the 
maternal traits will predominate. But in every descendant 
from the same pair there is more or less of the peculiari- 
ties of each parent plainly discernible. The inference, 
therefore, may be safely drawn that the male and the 
female parent each contributes to the formation of the 
ante-foetal germ some cellular substance, in which resides 



LAWS OF DEVELOPMENT. 235 

the typical characteristic of animal organism which each 
parent possesses. The compound germ that is thus formed 
is endowed with the mysterious principle of animal life 
which admits of growth and development ; and whether 
after its formation the female parent bestows most or be- 
stows least upon the product, that product consists of a 
union of cellular substances contributed by both the male 
and the female parent in the sexual act of procreation. 
This compound resultant ^erm, in the earliest stage of its 
formation, like the separate cells of which it is a union, 
exhibits no visible difference when we compare the ante- 
foetal germ of one animal with that of a different animal. 
Perhaps we shall never be able to detect either chemical or 
mechanical differences in the cellular substances or in the 
earliest stage of the compound product which has resulted 
from their union. But in that compound product there 
resides a contributory cellular substance derived from each 
of the parents ; and it is a just inference from this fact, and 
from what we learn when we trace the further develop- 
ment, that there is a peculiar and typical structure im- 
pressed upon and inwrapped in this compound germ, which 
is to grow into a foetal development by a law of its own. 
There will at the same time be a particular law of develop- 
ment for each distinct species of animal, and a general law 
of development for a great variety of species among whom 
there obtains a common process of the sexual union and of 
the contribution of male and female cellular substance. 
When the foetus becomes formed, there will still be marked 
resemblances in the different species, before the stage is 
reached at which the characteristic structure of each spe- 
cies is to begin to unfold itself. But at some time the fun- 
damental difference of structure originally lodged in the 
cellular substances of which the compound ante-foetal germ 
was composed, and impressed upon that germ as the type 
which was gradually to unfold itself into a distinct being, 



236 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

will begin to exert its force. The resemblances of structure 
will become less and less, as the foetus of the different ani- 
mals approaches to the time of birth. Organs, or appear- 
ances of organs, which at one stage of the comparison have 
seemed to indicate descent from a common ancestral stock, 
but which may have been only the result of a common pro- 
cess of foetal development, will be found to be varied by 
force of the original diversity of structure and destiny that 
was made to reside in the semipal substance of each dis- 
tinct species of animal ; and, at length, this original and 
intentional peculiarity of structure and being would be- 
come perfected at or before the period when birth is to 
take place, leaving only those resemblances which must 
obtain in all organisms constructed in certain respects upon 
a uniform plan, and brought into being by a common pro- 
cess of procreation and gestation. 

Let us now see whether this reasoning involves any 
such unphilosophical or unscientific belief as is supposed. 
Passing by the often-repeated assertion that the facts of 
comparative embryologic development are reconcilable only 
with the belief in evolution, let us advert to some of those 
facts. "The substitutions," says Mr. Spencer, "of organs 
and the suppression of organs, are among those secondary 
embryological phenomena which harmonize with the belief 
in evolution, but can not be reconciled with any other be- 
lief. There are cases where, during its earlier stages of 
development, an embryo possesses organs that afterward 
dwindle away, as there arise other organs to discharge the 
same functions. And there are cases where organs make 
their appearance, grow to certain points, have no functions 
to discharge, and disappear by absorption." The concrete 
illustration of this substitution and suppression of organs is 
thus given by Mr. Spencer : 

"We have a remarkable instance of this substitution in 
the successive temporary appliances for aerating the blood 



EMBRYONIC CHANGES. 237 

which the mammalian embryo exhibits. During the first 
phase of its development, the mammalian embryo circulates 
its blood through a system of vessels distributed over what is 
called the area vasculosa, a system of vessels homologous with 
one which, among fishes, serves for aerating the blood until 
the permanent respiratory organs come into play. After a 
time, there buds out from the mammalian embryo a vascu- 
lar membrane called the allantois, homologous with one 
which, in birds and reptiles, replaces the first as a breathing 
apparatus. But while, in the higher oviparous vertebrates, 
the allantois serves the purpose of a lung during the rest 
of embryonic life, it does not do so in the mammalian em- 
bryo. In implacental mammals it aborts, having no func- 
tion to discharge ; and in the higher mammals it becomes 
'^ placentiferous, and serves as the means of intercommuni- 
cation between the parent and the offspring " — becomes an 
organ of nutrition more than of respiration. JSTow, since 
the first system of external blood-vessels, not being in con- 
tact with a directly oxygenated medium, can not be very 
serviceable to the mammalian embryo as a lung ; and since 
the second system of external blood-vessels is, to the im- 
placental embryo, of no greater avail than the first ; and 
since the communication between the embryo and the pla- 
centa among placental mammals might as well or better 
have been made directly, instead of by metamorphosis of 
the allantois — these substitutions appear unaccountable as 
results of design. But they are quite congruous with the 
supposition that the mammalian type arose out of lower 
vertebrate types. For, in such case, the mammalian em- 
bryo, passing through states representing, more or less dis- 
tinctly, those which its remote ancestors had, in common 
with the lower vertebrata, develops these subsidiary organs 
in like ways with the lower vertebrata." * 

* "Biology," i, pp. 339,370. 



238 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

In what way, then, are these substitutions unaccounta- 
ble as results of design, and why are they any more con- 
gruous with the supposition that the mammalian type 
arose out of the lower vertebrate type ? In the first place, 
it is necessary to haye a distinct conception of what is 
meant by design. In the present case, it means that for 
a certain large group of animals there was established a 
system of reproduction by the sexual union of male and 
female, each contributing a cellular substance peculiar to 
itself, in the formation of a compound cellular substance in 
which the separate substances are united, and which is to 
be deyeloped into the foetus by a law of growth ; and as a 
further design there is wrapped up in the compound germ 
of each distinct species of animal a typical plan of ultimate 
form and structure. This typical plan can not be detected 
in the germ itself, as it is too subtile and obscure eyen for 
the microscope ; but we haye eyery reason to belieye that it 
is there in all its distinctness of original purpose, because 
at a later stage of the embryonic deyelopment we find a dis- 
tinct species of animal is the result. This is a conclusion 
that must be adopted by the eyolutionist, as well as by the 
belieyer in special creations, because it has nothing to do 
with the question of how distinct species came to exist. 
Whether they were designedly and separately created, or 
were eyolyed out of one another, the reproductiye process 
by which the indiyiduals of the same species are brought 
into being alike inyolves the conclusion that, in the ante- 
foetal germ of that species, there is somehow inyolyed, in a 
form so minute that it can not be seen, the type of animal 
which is to belong to that species, and to no other. Here, 
then, we haye the grand and compound design which is to 
obtain throughout a whole group of different animals ; 
namely, that they shall multiply in the production of in- 
diyiduals of their own types, by a sexual union, in which 
the male and the female each contributes a cellular sub- 



EMBKYONIO CHANGES. 239 

stance of its own to the formation of a compound germ, 
and in that germ there is made to reside the typical form 
and structure of a distinct organism, so minute that we 
can not see it, but which we must conclude from the result 
has been put there to be developed by a law of growth or- 
dained for the accomplishment of a certain distinct order 
of beings. But the very obscurity of this type, in the earli- 
est stage of embryonic development, leads to the conclusion 
that while it will never be lost, so long as its life is preserved, 
it will unfold itself in ways that will be equally beyond our 
ken, until the point is reached where it is no longer ob- 
scured, but where it is revealed in all its distinctness of 
outline and its peculiarity of structure. What is certain 
and invariable is, that the type peculiar to the species is at 
some time in the growth of the individual animal perfectly 
developed. But in the modes of its development through 
different embryonic stages, there will be variations and sub- 
stitutions of organs in the different species, but in each dis- 
tinct species these variations and substitutions will be uni- 
formly the same, because the law of development imposed 
by the distinct type, while it may operate differently among 
different species, will always operate in the same way in the 
same species. Thus in one animal the development from 
the original type which was implanted in its seminal ante- 
foetal germ may at one stage exhibit an organ for which at 
a later stage another organ will be substituted ; and in an- 
other animal a seemingly corresponding organ may serve a 
different purpose, or may altogether abort. These embry- 
ologic phenomena, varying in different species, but occur- 
ring uniformly in the same species, are necessarily among 
the most obscure of all the phenomena of animal life, on 
account of the fact that they take place where we can not 
watch the changes or modifications as they are taking place 
during actual foetal life. But they are no more explicable 
upon the hypothesis of the descent of distinct animals from 



240 CREATION OR EVOLUTION"? 

a common stock, than they are upon the hypothesis of dis- 
tinct creations of species. Upon the former hypothesis, 
the assumed propinquity of descent implies the preserva- 
tion of the same mode of embryonic development until it 
becomes varied by the operation of causes that bring about 
a new habit of development, and then a fixation in this new 
habit after a new species or a new ancestral stock is formed ; 
so that in each distinct species there comes at length to be 
a uniform process of substituting and suppressing organs, 
or changing the functions of organs. But how are we to 
account for the operation of causes that have preserved a 
parallelism of development, along with the operation of 
causes that have produced the different modes of develop- 
ment, when all the species are supposed to be derived from 
a common ancestral stock, which first began to procreate 
and to develop its descendants in one and the same way ? 
What are the facts which will enable us to say that the 
mammalian type arose out of the lower vertebrate types, 
when we compare the different modes of their embryologic 
development ? How are we to estimate the chances for a 
preservation of so much resemblance as exists between the 
two in their embryologic lives, and the chances for the 
variations that are observable ? What we can safely con- 
clude is that there is a law which holds each species in a 
constant repetition of its own foetal growth, according to 
its unvarying development in the same series of changes, 
substitutions, or suppressions. But we can not safely con- 
clude that this species became formed in the supposed pro- 
cess of descent from a remote ancestral stock, which may 
or may not have originally exhibited the same series of 
changes, substitutions, or suppressions. If the ancestors 
of the mammalian vertebrates were the kind of animal 
supposed, we have to find, in order to justify the supposed 
descent, those states which represent the correspondence 
between the mode in which the ancestral stock developed 



HOW CREATION DEALS WITH EMBRYOLOGY. 241 

its own embryos, when compared with the mode in which 
the type of the lower vertebrata developed its embryos, 
so as to make it reasonably certain that these subsidiary 
organs derived their several substitutions or suppressions 
from the process of descent, and not from any special mode 
of development ordained for each distinct species. We 
may imagine these states through which the mammalian 
embiyo has passed, but as yet we have only a theory which 
suggests their existence without facts to support it. The 
truth would seem to be that this whole subject of compara- 
tive embryology, upon the hypothesis of the kinship of all 
organized beings, or the descent of many distinct species 
from a common stock, is involved in very great difficulties ; 
not the least of which is the difficulty of explaining how 
the diverging descendants from that stock came to be 
endowed with habits of embryologic life and growth that 
resulted in the production of very different modes of de- 
velopment, and at the same time preserved for each new 
species its own peculiar mode of development. To say, for 
example, that the mammalian embryo passed through states 
representing, more or less distinctly, those which its remote 
ancestors had in common with the lower vertebrata, and that 
it developed certain subsidiary organs in like ways with the 
lower vertebrata, is merely to state a theory, which, with- 
out some evidence that the mammalian embryo was a for- 
mation resulting from a connection of lives with lives back 
to a common ancestor whose embryo was developed as those 
of the lower vertebrata are, amounts to nothing. Often as 
this want of evidence has been adverted to, it must be here 
again pointed out : for the whole argument from embry- 
ology, like that derived from a comparison of the forms of 
mature animals, lacks the support of facts that are essential 
to show the connection of life with life which descent from 
a common ancestral stock necessarily implies. 

On the other hand, the hypothesis of the distinct crea- 



242 CREATION- OR EVOLUTION? 

tion of different sjoecies deals witli tlie phenomena of em- 
brjologic life in a very different way. It supposes the 
creation of a pair, male and female, and a law of procreation, 
designed for the multiplication of individuals of a fixed 
type. It supposes many such creations, each having in its 
own peculiar germ the characteristic type of organism that 
will distinguish the mature animal from all the others. It 
supposes finally a law of development common to all the 
species the individuals of which are multiplied by the sex- 
ual union of male and female ; a law of growth under like 
conditions, which leads to a parallelism of development until 
the typical plan of form and structure designed for each 
distinct animal, and implanted in its germ, begins to take 
on a mode of development peculiar to that species, and at 
length the perfect individual of that species is the result. 
In this hypothesis, therefore, there is no necessity for re- 
sorting to any connection with an imaginary ancestral stock 
of a different type, or for resorting to a theoretical process by 
which successive generations may be supposed to have grad- 
ually arisen out of the ancestral stock by successive changes 
which have at length resulted in a totally new species. 
The new species is what is supposed to have been aborigi- 
nally created, and to have been placed under its own law 
for the multiplication of individuals of the same type. In 
point of simplicity, of comparative certainty, of freedom 
from accidental causes of variation of which we can predi- 
cate no specific result, this hypothesis seems to have a far 
greater degree of probable evidence in its favor than the 
theory which entirely lacks the requisite evidence of inter- 
mediate connections between the lives of one species with 
the lives of a remote and different species. For, while it 
may be truly said that no man ever saw a special creation 
take place, and while such an act of the infinite power is of 
a nature that places it beyond the observation of our senses, 
it is neither inconceivable nor improbable, nor inconsistent 



DIFFICULTIES TO BE ENCOUNTERED. 243 

with the idea of the divine attributes which we derive from 
the study of nature. On the other hand, it is not only equal- 
ly true that no man ever saw, or in the nature of things ever 
can see, an evolution of distinct species out of other distinct 
species, but the whole nature of the supposed process of trans- 
formation involves an element of chance which forbids all 
calculation of the results. How, for example, in this very 
matter of comparative embryological development on the 
hypothesis of descent of all the species of the vertebrate ani- 
mals from a common ancestral stock of a different type, are 
we to account for the fact that the embryo of any one of the 
descended species has come to be developed in a mode 
peculiar to itself and differing from the mode in which the 
embryo of the ancestral stock was developed ? The law of 
sexual union, under which the individuals of the supposed 
ancestral stock were multiplied, must have imposed on that 
species an invincible necessity of reproducing in its off- 
spring the same type that constituted the peculiar organ- 
ism of the parents, whether these parents were or were not 
the fittest survivors of their race after the severest struggle 
for existence which they may have had to undergo. If the 
pair, or the male of that pair, has in the course of that 
struggle acquired a new organ, or more completely devel- 
oped an old one, before the act of procreation takes place, 
how is it that the ovum is developed into the foetus, and the 
foetus into the newly born infant, in an invariable mode 
peculiar to the species to which the parents belonged ? 
Why did not the same causes of variation which are sup- 
posed to have changed the ancestral type into one of a new 
and entirely distinct character, also vary the mode of foetal 
development ? "When and how did the new organs become 
fixed in the type which the parents have transmitted to the 
offspring ? And if they became so fixed in the germ which 
was formed out of the cellular substance contributed by 
each of the parents, why do we find in every known species 
12 



24:4: CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

participating in this process of reproduction a uniform 
mode of embryologic development peculiar to the species, 
and exhibiting its own suppressions and substitutions of 
organs, irrespective of any newly acquired peculiarities in 
the individual structures of the parents ? 

The believer in special creations has to answer no such 
questions as these. His hypothesis assumes the creation of 
a pair of animals of a certain distinct species ; a law of pro- 
creation and gestation common to a vast multitude of or- 
ganisms ; and a law of embryologic growth peculiar to each 
species. Whatever peculiarities of structure may have 
been possessed by the immediate parents of any individual 
of any one of these different species — peculiarities which 
did not separate the parents from their race, but only made 
them the fittest survivors of their race — ^those peculiarities 
would or would not descend to their immediate offspring, 
according to varying and very inappreciable circumstances. 
But that which constituted the special type of the race, 
and especially that which constituted its peculiar mode of 
development during the embryonic stage, would remain un- 
affected by these incidental and accidental peculiarities of 
the parents, because, from all that we can discover, that 
special type was impressed upon the embryo at the earli- 
est stage of its existence, and constituted the living model 
that was to be developed into the perfect animal of that 
species, by a law which placed it beyond the influence of 
any adventitious and non-essential advantages which the 
male or female parent may have acquired over other in- 
dividuals of the same race. So that, if the postulate of 
a special creation of species be assumed as the groundwork 
of the reasoning, we have to go through with no specu- 
lations about a common ancestral stock of all the species, 
and we have to account for no phenomena that are ex- 
posed to chances which might have produced very differ- 
ent results from those which are open to our observation, 



THE "ALLANTOIS." 245 

and results of which we can predicate nothing with any de- 
gree of certainty. On the hypothesis of the special creation 
of a species, and an aboriginal pair of each species, with all 
that this implies, we can with a high degree of certainty 
predicate most of the phenomena that we have to observe, 
and more especially so much of the phenomena of embry- 
ologic growth of the different species as are open to our in- 
vestigation after the life of both mother and embryo has 
become extinct. 

It only remains for me to give to this reasoning a con- 
crete application. Take the case made use of by Mr. Spen- 
cer in the passage above cited — that of the "allantois," a 
vascular membrane, which is said to be in the mammalian 
embryo homologous with one which in the higher oviparous 
vertebrates, such as the birds and reptiles, replaces what 
was at first a breathing apparatus, and becomes for them, 
during the rest of embryonic life, a sort of lung, or an 
organ that aerates the blood until the permanent respiratory 
organs come into play. In the mammalian embryo, the 
first appliance for aerating the blood is described as a system 
of vessels distributed over the area vasculosa, and like that 
which is first observable for the same purpose in fishes. 
But, as the mammalian embryo continues to grow, a change 
takes place. There buds out from it the vascular mem- 
brane called the ^^allantois," which is substituted in the 
place of the first aerating apparatus. Then a further 
change takes place, as between the higher oviparous verte- 
brates and the mammalian vertebrates. In the former, the 
"allantois" continues to perform the breathing function 
through the rest of the embryonic life. In the mammalian 
vertebrates it undergoes two changes : In the implacental 
mammals, it aborts, having no function to discharge ; in the 
placental mammals it becomes modified into another organ, 
namely, that which serves to convey nutrition from the 
mother to the offspring. After birth, it is of course ended. 



246 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

Now, the reasoning, or rather the assertion, that these 
substitutions are unaccountable as the results of design, 
ajDpears to me to be singularly inconclusiye. It is quite 
illogical, according to all philosophic meaning of design as 
applied to the works of the Creator, or to the works of na- 
ture, if that term is preferred, to argue that a particular 
object could have been better accomplished directly, than 
by a metamorphosis of an organ from one function to 
another, or by substitution. The metamorphosis, or substi- 
tution, which in such cases we find in nature, is of itself the 
very highest evidence that the indirect method was the 
best, if we admit the idea of a Creator, because it was the 
method chosen by a being of infinite perfections for reasons 
which we may not be able to discover, but which we must 
presume to have existed, if we concede that hypothesis of 
attributes which " design " in this case necessarily implies. 
But how are these metamorphoses and substitutions any 
more accountable upon the supposition that the mammalian 
type arose by generation out of the lower vertebrate types 
which in their embryonic life exhibited the same changes ? 
The doctrine or theory of evolution does not account for 
them at all ; for, while the doctrine supposes, as matters of 
pure theory, that there were certain states through which 
the mammalian embryo passed, which represented more or 
less distinctly those which it had in common with its as- 
sumed remote ancestors, the lov^^er vertebrata, it does 
nothing more than to suggest the theoretical idea that the 
mammalian embryo came to develop these subsidiary organs 
in the mode in which they were developed in the embryo 
of the lower vertebrata, because it was descended from the 
lower vertebrata. The varying states through which the 
embryo passed from the lower vertebrata to the mammalian 
type, are all hypothetical, and there is, therefore, no basis 
of fact on which to rest the belief in a common mode of 
development, as resulting from a connection of lives with 



ARGUMENT FROM DISTRIBUTION. 247 

lives between the mammalian type and tlie types of birds, 
reptiles, or fishes. 

On the other hand, the hypothesis of the special creation 
of a species implies the simple fact of a designed process of 
embryonic development for each species, with substitutions 
of organs and changes of function in certain organs peculiar 
to that species ; a fact which may well consist in a certain 
parallelism in the different metamorphoses, and a preserva- 
tion of the same unvarying changes in the development of 
each separate embryo. Why these changes should exist, we 
can not tell ; but their existence is very strong proof that 
they were designed, or made to take place, for some reason, 
if we admit the hypothesis of a Creator. For that hypothe- 
sis, we must look to a wider class of facts, and to the whole 
phenomena of nature. 

4. We now come to the argument from distribution. 
This is one of the weakest of the indirect supports of the 
doctrine of evolution ; but, as it is much relied upon, it 
must be stated with all the force that it is supposed to 
have. The facts that are relied upon are these : When we 
survey the whole surface of the globe, so far as it is known 
to us, we find, in the first place, that the areas which have 
similar conditions (of soil and climate), and sometimes, 
where the areas are nearly adjacent, are occupied by quite 
different faunas. On the other hand, it is said that areas 
remote from each other in latitude, and contrasted in soil 
and climate, are occupied by closely allied faunas. The 
inference drawn is, that there is no manifest predetermined 
adaptation of the organisms to the areas, or habitats, in 
which they are found, because we do not find that like or- 
ganisms are universally or generally found in like habitats, 
nor very unlike organisms in very unlike habitats. The 
conclusion is, that the facts of distribution in space do not 
conform to the hypothesis of design. In other words, the 
different animals found in different regions were not spe- 



248 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

cially designed for those regions, but some of them have 
extended into regions of a different character ; and when 
the regions are very unlike there are not found very unlike 
organisms, but there is a general similarity, or a less exten- 
sive variety. There is said, also, to be another important 
fact, namely, that **the similar areas peopled by dissimilar 
forms are those between which there are impassable bar- 
riers ; while the dissimilar areas peopled by similar forms, 
are those between which there are no such barriers." 
Hence is drawn the conclusion that ^^each species of or- 
ganism tends ever to expand its sphere of existence — to in- 
trude on other areas, other modes of life, other media." * A 
good deal of aid is supposed to be derived for this argument 
respecting animal life by analogies drawn from the vegeta- 
ble kingdom ; but I can not help thinking that there is 
much caution to be observed in formulating such analogies 
into a law of universal application, or into one that relates 
to the existence of animal organisms. The origin, the 
multiplication, and the spread of animals involve a princi- 
ple of life, organization and development which is very dif- 
ferent in some important respects from that which obtains 
in the vegetable world. But, without laying any stress 
upon this distinction, and without intending to deprive 
the argument for animal evolution of any aid which it can 
derive from such supposed analogies, I pass to the specific 
argument respecting animal distribution. The argument 
is this : Eaces of organisms become distributed over differ- 
ent areas, and also through different media. They are 
thrust by the pressure of overpopulation from their old 
into new habitats, and as they diverge more widely in 
space they undergo more and more modifications of struct- 
ure, by reason of the new conditions on which they enter. 
Thus, these powerfully incident forces, the new conditions 

*"Biology,"i, p. 388. 



DISTRIBUTION IN TIME. 249 

on which the migrating races enter in new regions, vary 
the structure which they originally brought with them, and 
which descended to them from the common stock of which 
they were modified descendants. The widest divergences 
in space, under such circumstances, will indicate the long- 
est periods of time during which these yarious descendants 
from a common stock have been subject to modifying con- 
ditions. There will, therefore, come to be, it is said, 
among organisms of the same group, smaller contrasts of 
structure in the smaller areas ; and, where the varying in- 
cident forces vary greatly within given areas, the alterations 
will become more numerous than in equal areas which are 
less variously conditioned : that is to say, in the most uni- 
form regions there will be the fewest species, and in the 
most multiform regions there will be the most numerous 
species. These hypotheses are said to be in accordance 
with the facts of distribution in space.* 

But there are also facts of distribution through differ- 
ent media. The meaning of this is, that, whereas all forms 
of organisms have descended from some primordial simplest 
form, which inhabited some one medium, such as the water, 
its descendants, by migration into some other medium or 
other media, underwent adaptations to media quite unlike 
the original medium. In other words, the earth and the 
air have been colonized from the water. Numerous facts 
are adduced in support of this conclusion, which are thus 
summarized : 

There are particular habitats in which animals are subject to 
changes of media. In such habitats exist animals having, in various 
degrees, the power to live in both media, consequent on various 
phases of transitional organization. Near akin to these animals, 
there are some that, after passing their early lives in the water, 
acquire more completely the structures fitting them to live on land, 
to which they then migrate. Lastly, we have closely-allied creat- 

*" Biology," i, pp. 890, 391. 



250 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

ures like the Surinam toad and the terrestrial salamander, which, 
though they belong by their structures to the class Amphibia, are 
not amphibious in their habits — creatures the larvae of which do 
not pass their early lives in the water, and yet go through these same 
metamorphoses! Must we, then, think that the distribution of kin- 
dred organisms through different media presents an insurmountable 
difficulty ? On the contrary, with facts like these before us, the evo- 
lution-hypothesis supplies possible interpretations of many phenom- 
ena that are else unaccountable. Realizing the way in which such 
changes of media are in some cases gradually imposed by physical 
conditions, and in other cases voluntarily commenced and slowly 
increased in the search after food, we shall begin to understand 
how, in the course of evolution, there have arisen those strange 
obscurations of one type by the externals of another type. When 
we see land-birds occasionally feeding by the water-side, and then 
learn that one of them, the water-ouzel, an " anomalous member of 
the strictly terrestrial thrush family, wholly subsists by diving — 
grasping the stones with its feet and using its wings under water " 
— we are enabled to comprehend how, under pressure of population, 
aquatic habits may be acquired by creatures organized for aerial 
life ; and how there may eventually arise an ornithic type, in which 
the traits of the bird are very much disguised. 

Finding among mammals some that, in search of prey or shelter, 
have taken to the water in various degrees, we shall cease to be 
perplexed on discovering the mammalian structure hidden under a 
fish-like form, as it is in the Cetacea. Grant that there has even 
been going on that redistribution of organisms which we see still 
resulting from their intrusions on one another's areas, media, and 
modes of life, and we have an explanation of those multitudinous 
cases in which homologies of structure are complicated with analo- 
gies. And while it accounts for the occurrence, in one medium of or- 
ganic types fundamentally organized for another medium, the doctrine 
of evolution accounts also for the accompanying unfitness. Either the 
seal has descended from some mammal which, little by little, became 
aquatic in its habits, in which case the structure of its hind-limbs has 
a meaning ; or else it was specially framed for its present habitat, 
in which case the structure of its hind-limbs is incomprehensible.* 

* " Biology," i, p. 396. 



DISTRIBUTION IN TIME. 251 

Along with these phenomena of distribution in space 
and in medium of life, we have the further element of dis- 
tribution in time ; the facts of which are admitted, how- 
ever, to be too fragn\entarj to be conclusive either for or 
against the doctrine of evolution. Still it is claimed that 
there is one general truth respecting distribution in time, 
which is *' profoundly significant, namely, that the rela- 
tions between the extinct forms of life, found by geological 
exploration, and the present forms of life, especially in each 
great geographical region, show in the aggregate a close 
kinship, and a connection which is in perfect harmony with 
the belief in evolution, but quite irreconcilable with any 
other belief. As Mr. Darwin has expressed it, there is ' a 
wonderful relationship in the same continent between the 
living and the dead. ' " * 

The argument from distribution is thus summed up by 
Mr. Spencer : 

Given, then, that pressure which species exercise on one another, 
in consequence of the universal overfilling of their respective habi- 
tats — given the resulting tendency to thrust themselves into one 
another's areas, and media, and modes of life, along such lines of 
least resistance as from time to time are found — given, besides the 
changes in modes of life hence arising, those other changes which 
physical alterations of habitats necessitate — given the structural 
modifications directly or indirectly produced in organisms by modi- 
fied conditions — and the facts of distribution in space and time are 
accounted for. That divergence and redivergence of organic forms, 
which we saw to be shadowed forth by the truths of classification 
and the truths of embryology, we see to be also shadowed forth by 
the truths of distribution. If that aptitude to multiply, to spread, 
to separate, and to differentiate, which the human races have in all 

* " Biology," i, p. 399. It is to be noted that the relationship here re- 
ferred to is supposed or apparent kinship between the aggregate of the sur- 
viving and the aggregate of the extinct forms which have died out in recent 
geologic times. But this does not supply the steps of descent by which 
any one surviving form can be traced back to any one extinct form. 



252 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

times shown, be a tendency common to races in general, as we have 
ample reason to assume, then there will result that kind of relation 
among the species, and genera, and orders, peopling the earth's 
surface, which we find exists. Those remarkable identities of type 
discovered between organisms inhabiting one medium, and strangely- 
modified organisms inhabiting another medium, are at the same time 
rendered comprehensible. And the appearances and disappearances 
of species which the geological record shows us, as well as the con- 
nections between successive groups of species from early eras down 
to our own, cease to be inexphcable.* 

Passing by what is here said of the aptitude of the hu- 
man race to multiply, to spread, to separate, and to differ- 
entiate — an aptitude which has never resulted in the produc- 
tion of an essentially different animal, or in anything but 
incidental variations within the limits of the same species — 
I propose now to apply to this argument from distribution 
a test which seems to me to be a perfectly fair one, and one 
which it ought to be able to encounter. If the theory that 
the different species of animals now known to us have been 
evolved successively by descent from some primordial sim- 
plest form through modifications induced by change of 
habitation, of medium of life, and accumulation of new 
structures occurring through an immense period of time, 
be a sound hypothesis, the process which has evolved supe- 
rior out of inferior organizations ought, in consistency with 
itself and with all its supposed conditions, to be capable of 
being reversed, so as to lead to the evolution of inferior out 
of superior organisms. For, although the doctrine of evo- 
lution has thus far been applied only to facts which are 
supposed to show an ascent in the scale of being, the argu- 
ment ought to be equally good for a descent in the scale of 
being, provided we take care to include all the elements and 
causes of a change of structure, mode and medium of life, 
and the necessary element of time, in the operation of the 

*"Biology,"i, p. 401. 



EVOLUTION EEYERSED. 253 

process. The imaginary case that is about to be put shall 
include all the elements of the evolutionary hypothesis, 
and will serve to test at least the rationality of that theory. 
Let it be supposed, then, that there was a period in the 
history of this earth when the whole human race, however 
it originated, was confined to an island, thousands of miles 
from any other land. This race of men adapted to a life 
in one medium, the air, may be supposed to have so far 
advanced in the ruder arts of hunting and fishing, and in 
the higher art of tillage, as to be able for many generations 
to support life by what the sea and the land would put 
within their reach, and by the product which their rude 
agriculture could extract from the soil, or which the soil 
would spontaneously yield. But as the centuries flow on, 
the population begins to press upon the resources of the ter- 
ritory, and the struggle for life becomes very great. At 
length a point is reached where the supply of food from 
the land becomes inadequate to sustain the population, 
and what can be made up from the sea will not supply the 
deficiency. The population will then slowly decrease, but, 
while this decrease goes on, there comes in a disturbing 
cause which will prevent any adjustment of the supply of 
food to the diminished number of the consumers. The 
sea begins by almost imperceptible but steadily progressing 
encroachments to diminish the area of dry land ; a change 
of climate reduces the number of other animals available 
for human food, and reduces the productive capacity of the 
earth. Then ensues that struggle for existence which is 
supposed to entail changes of medium of life, and to induce 
transformations of structure. The conditions of existence 
have become wholly changed. The wretched descendants 
of a once comparatively thriving race are dwelling on a 
territory which has become a marsh. They have no means 
of migrating to another territory ; they can only migrate 
to another medium. They begin by feeding exclusively on 



254 CREATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

what the water will afford. They pass their lives in the 
pursuit of a prey which lives only in the water, and in this 
change of life they acquire or develop organs adapted to 
the new condition, organs which, in such miserable repro- 
duction of their own species as can go on, they transmit to 
their offspring. Modifications upon modifications accumu- 
late in this Way through untold periods of time, until at 
last a new aquatic or a new amphibious creature is formed, 
and the difference between that creature and his remote 
ancestral human stock is as great as that between man 
and the seal, or between man and any fish that swims. 
Still, there will be peculiarities of structure retained, which 
might lead any inhabitant of another world, alighting on 
this globe and undertaking to trace the origin of this new 
creature, to the supposition that he was akin to a race of 
men whose fossil remains he might find buried in some 
stratum beneath the marsh which was the last habitat of 
this unfortunate race, when it had all the characteristics of 
its original type. 

Is it conceivable that this transformation could take 
place ? Could such a condition and situation result in any- 
thing but the utter extinction of the human race, or, in 
other words, in an absolute break ? Could there be any 
modifications exhibited by the last survivors of that race 
other than those which are familiar- to us among the varie- 
ties of the human species which have never separated them- 
selves from their race, and between whom and their ances- 
tral stock, wherever it was originally placed on this globe, we 
recognize no fundamental difference of structure, whatever 
may have been the changes of habitat or conditions of life ? 
Yet the conditions and elements of this imaginary case, which 
is simply the process of evolution reversed, are just what the 
evolution theory assumes as the causes of that modification 
which proceeds from a lower to a higher organism ; and 
whatever may be said of the tendency, through *' the sur- 



RESTORATION TO THE ORIGINAL TYPE. 255 

vival of the fittest," to evolve higher out of lower forms of 
animal life, if we allow time enough for the process, there 
is no reason, in the nature of things, why corresponding 
conditions should not lead to a degradation as well as to 
an elevation in the scale of beings. There is, however, one 
reason why no such potency should be ascribed to the con- 
ditions, either in respect to the one result or the other. 
That reason is that all such causes of modification, either 
in the ascending or the descending scale, are so limited in 
their effects that distinct beings can not be rationally 
predicated as their product, whereas the power of the Infi- 
nite Artificer to give existence to distinct beings is abso- 
lutely without limit. If naturalists would turn their atten- 
tion to the limitations upon the power of all such causes as 
those which are supposed to work in the process of evolu- 
tion, and would give us the explanations to which those 
limitations point, in those cases of local variation which 
are exhibited by animals that can clearly be traced to a 
parent form, they would not be compelled to resort to a 
sweeping theory that refuses all force to any hypothesis but 
its own. 

But now let us go a step further in this imaginary case. 
Let us suppose that after this new creature, fish or am- 
phibian, descended from the human race, has inhabited the 
water surrounding the ill-fated island for a million of years, 
another great change takes place. The water begins to re- 
cede from the land by gradations as slow as those by which 
in the former period it encroached. The land rises from the 
low level to which it had sunk, by volcanic action. Forests 
spring up upon the sides of mountains. The soil becomes 
firm ; verdure overspreads the fields ; the climate grows 
genial ; the wilderness blossoms as the rose. Allow another 
million years for this restoration of the territory to an inhab- 
itable condition. Slowly and in an unbroken series of gen- 
erations the aquatic creatures, descended from the ancient 



256 CKEATION OR EVOLUTION"? 

human inhabitants of the island, emerge from the sea and 
betake themselves to the land. Modifications upon modifi- 
cations accumulate, new organs are acquired ; the survival 
of the fittest perpetuates them ; the animals ascend in the 
scale of being, until the human type is again evolved out 
of the degraded descendants of the population which two 
millions of years previously dwelt as men upon the island, 
and carried on in some primitive fashion the simpler arts 
of human life. Is not this just as supposable as the evo- 
lution of the human race out of some lower form of organ- 
ism ? Are not all the elements — time, migration from one 
medium to another, change of conditions, and what is sup- 
posed to lead to the production of different organisms — 
just as powerful to produce the inferior out of the supe- 
rior as to produce the superior out of the inferior, and so on 
interchangeably ? The answer in each case is, that all such 
causes of modification in the animal kingdom are limited ; 
that when once a distinct species is in existence, we have 
no evidence that it loses its distinct type or merges itself in 
another, although the earth may be full of evidence that 
types which formerly existed are no longer among the liv- 
ing organisms. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Mr. Spencer's agnosticism — His theory of the origin of religious beliefs — 
The mode in which mankind are to lose the consciousness of a per- 
sonal God. 

In" a former chapter I had occasion to adyert to one of 
Mr. Spencer's favorite dogmas, namely, the impossibility of 
an intellectual conception of creation, which he thinks is 
made apparent by the statement that one term of the rela- 
tion, the thing created, is something, and the other term of 
the relation, that out of which the thing was created, is 
nothing. When I wrote the chapter in which I commented 
on this extraordinary kind of logic, I felt a little disposed to 
apologize to my readers for answering ijb. I had not then 
met with the fuller statement of Mr Spencer's peculiar 
agnosticism which I am now about to quote. The contro- 
versy recently carried on between Mr. Spencer and Mr. 
Harrison was closed by the former in an article entitled 
" Last Words about Agnosticism and the Religion of Human- 
ity," which appeared in the '^Nineteenth Century " for No- 
vember, 1884. This drew my attention to a passage in Mr. 
Spencer's " Essays," which he has reproduced in his late arti- 
cle for the purpose of repeating his position against some of 
the misrepresentations which he complains had been made 
of it by Mr. Harrison. I have nothing to do with the con- 
troversy between these two gentlemen, or with any of the 
arguments which Mr. Spencer's opponents, be they church- 
men or laymen, have employed against him. I take the 
passage as he has quoted it from his ''Essays," for the pur- 



258 CREATION OE EVOLUTION? 

pose of making his agnostic yiews the subject of a more 
extended commentary than I had bestowed on them in my 
previous chapter, in writing which I had before me only a 
passage contained in his " Biology." There is no occasion, 
howeyer, for altering a word of what I had previously writ- 
ten ; for, on a comparison of his position as given in the 
'* Biology," and that given in the ** Essays," it appears very 
plainly that 1 had not misunderstood him. But as the 
passage in the " Essays " displays much more fully the pe- 
culiar reasoning by which he supports his agnostic philos- 
ophy, I should not do justice to him or to my readers if I 
did not notice it. The passage is the following : 

Always implying terms in relation, thought implies that both 
terms shall be more or less defined ; and as fast as one of them be- 
comes indefinite, the relation also becomes indefinite, and thought 
becomes indistinct. Take the case of magnitudes. I think of an 
inch; I think of a foot; and having tolerably definite ideas of the 
two, I have a tolerably definite idea of the relation between them. 
I substitute for the foot a mile ; and being able to represent a mile 
much less definitely, I can not so definitely think of the relation be- 
tween an inch and a mile — can not distinguish it in thought from the 
relation between an inch and two miles, as clearly as I can distin- 
guish in thought the relation between an inch and one foot from 
the relation between an inch and two feet. And now, if I endeavor 
to think of the relation between an inch and the 240,000 miles 
from here to the moon, or the relation between an inch and the 
92,000,000 miles from here to the sun, I find that while these dis- 
tances, practically inconceivable, have become little more than 
numbers to which I frame no answering ideas, so too has the re- 
lation between an inch and either of them become practically in- 
conceivable. Now this partial failure in the process of forming 
thought relations, which happens even with finite magnitudes when 
one of them is immense, passes into complete failure when one of 
them can not be brought within any limits. The relation itself 
becomes unrepresentable at the same time that one of its terms 
becomes unrepresentable. Nevertheless, in this case it is to be 
observed that the almost blank form of relation preserves a certain 



MR. SPENCER'S AGNOSTICISM. 259 

qualitative character. It is still distinguishable as belonging to the 
consciousness of extensions, not to the consciousnesses of forces 
or durations; and in so far remains a vaguely identifiable relation. 
But now suppose we ask what happens when one term of the rela- 
tion has not simply magnitude having no known limits, and dura- 
tion of wliich neither beginning nor end is cognizable, but is also 
an existence not to be defined? In other words, what must hap- 
pen if one terra of the relation is not only quantitatively but also 
qualitatively unrepresentable? Clearly in this case the relation 
does not simply cease to be thinkable except as a relation of a cer- 
tain class, but it lapses completely. When one of the terms be- 
comes wholly unknowable, the law of thought can no longer be 
conformed to ; both because one term can not be present, and be- 
cause relation itself can not be framed. ... In brief, then, to Mr. 
Martineau's objection I reply that the insoluble difficulties he indi- 
cates arise here, as elsewhere, when thought is applied to that 
which transcends the sphere of thought ; and that just as when we 
try to pass beyond phenomenal manifestations to the Ultimate Re- 
ality manifested, we have to symbolize it out of such materials as 
the phenomenal manifestations give us; so we have simultaneously 
to symbolize the connection between this Ultimate Reality and its 
manifestations, as somehow allied to the connections among the 
phenomenal manifestations themselves. The truth Mr. Martineau's 
criticism adumbrates is that the law of thought fails where the ele- 
ments of thought fail ; and this is a conclusion quite conformable 
to the general view I defend. Still holding the validity of my ar- 
gument against Hamilton and Mansel, that in pursuance of their 
own principle the Relative is not at all thinkable as such, unless in 
contradiction to some existence posited, however vaguely, as tbe 
other term of a relation, conceived however indefinitely ; it is 
consistent on my part to hold that in this effort which thought 
inevitably makes to pass beyond its sphere, not only docs the 
product of thought become a dim symbol of a product, but the 
process of thought becomes a dim symbol of a process ; and hence 
any predicament inferable from the law of thought can not be 
asserted.* 

* " Essays," vol. iii, pp. 293-296. 



260 CREATIOiT OR EVOLUTION? 

In judging of the soundness of this reasoning, the first 
thing to be done is to determine what we are thinking 
about when we compare the finite with the infinite, or 
when, to put it as Mr. Spencer does, we have two terms of 
a relation, one of which is a thing open to the observation 
of our senses, and the other of which lies beyond them. 
In this case, does all thinkable relation lapse, or fade into 
an impossible conception, when we undertake to conceive 
of that which lies beyond what we see ? Does the relation 
between the two supposed terms cease to be a continuously 
existing relation ? Or, to quote Mr. Spencer's words, is it 
true that '* insoluble difficulties arise, because thought is 
applied to that which is beyond the sphere of thought " ? 

We must be careful to distinguish between the *' insol- 
uble difficulties" which arise out of the imperfection of 
language adequate to give a formal description of a thing, 
and which may lead us to suppose ourselves involved in 
contradictions, and the "insoluble difficulties" which may 
arise out of the impossibility of having a mental repre- 
sentation of that thing. The latter is the only difficulty 
about which we need concern ourselves ; and the best way 
to test the supposed difficulty as an insuperable one is to 
take one of the illustrations used by Mr. Spencer — the idea 
of space. We measure a foot or a mile of space, and then 
compare it with the idea of endless or (to us) immeasurable 
space. Figures afford us the means of expressing in lan- 
guage a certain definite number of miles of space, but, 
beyond the highest figures of which we have definite forms 
of expression, we can not go in definite descriptions of 
space. But when we have exhausted all the expressions of 
number that our arithmetical forms of expression admit, 
does it follow that we can not conceive of extension beyond 
that number ? On the contrary, the very measure which 
we are able to express in figures, to a certain extent, in re- 
gard both to space and time, gives us the idea of space and 



( 



TRUE THINKING. 261 

time, and shows us that there must be an extension of both 
beyond and forever beyond the portion of either which lan- 
guage will allow us definitely to describe. This to us im- 
measurable and indescribable extent of space or time be- 
comes a thinkable idea, because we are all the while thinking 
of space or time, whether it is a measurable portion of 
either, or an immeasurable and endless existence. 

Take as another illustration a purely moral idea. We 
know that there is a moral quality which we call goodness ; 
an attribute of human character of which we have a clear 
conception, and which we can describe because it is mani- 
fested to us in human lives. When we speak of the moral 
phenomena to which we give the name of goodness, or vir- 
tue, all mankind know what is meant. But human virtue 
is imperfect, limited, measurable. It may be idealized into 
something approaching to perfection, but the ideal charac- 
ter thus drawn must fall short of perfection if it is made 
consistent with human nature. But from human character 
we derive the idea of goodness or virtue as a thinkable idea. 
Is the idea of absolute perfection of this quality any less 
thinkable ? Absolute perfection of moral character can not 
be described by a definition ; but, as we know that a meas- 
urable goodness which we can describe exists, wherein con- 
sists the failure or lapse of a thinkable relation, when we 
reason from that which exists in a measurable degree to 
that which transcends all degree ? We are all the while 
thinking of goodness or virtue, whether we think of it as 
limited and imperfect, or as unlimited and perfect. Take 
another quality — power. We know that there is such a 
quality as power, wielded by human beings, and guided by 
their will. But human power is limited, measurable, and 
therefore finite. When we reason from the finite power of 
man to the idea of an infinite and immeasurable power 
held and wielded by another being, do we strive to conceive 
of something that is unthinkable because we can only say 



262 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

that the power of that other being is without limit ? We 
are all the while thinking of power, of the quality of power, 
whether we think of it as measurable or immeasurable. 
All qualities and all faculties which are manifested to us in 
a limited degree, when we conceive of them as unlimited 
and without degree, become proofs that what exists in a 
measurable and limited degree may exist without limitation 
and without degree. Although we can only define the 
finite, the infinite is not the less a subject of true thinking, 
because, whether we think of the finite or the infinite, what 
we are all the time thinking about is the quality of power, 
and nothing else. In the one case it is limited, in the 
other it is unlimited, but it is all the time the quality itself 
of which we are thinking.* 

But now let us attend a little more closely to Mr. Spen- 
cer's grand objection to this mode of thinking. The 
reader will be careful to note that what he needs to ascer- 
tain is, whether Mr. Spencer's agnostic theory is really 
sound. To test it, he must inquire just where the sup- 
posed difficulty lies. Translated into other language, Mr. 
Spencer's position is this : In order to keep within the 
sphere of possible thought, there must be a definite relation 
between any two ideas, which must not lapse, but the two 
ideas must be equally capable of mental representation. 
"When one term of the relation is an idea capable of mental 
representation, as when we think of a thing cognizable by 
our senses, and the other term of the relation is something 
that lies beyond them, the law of thought, according to 
Mr. Spencer, can no longer be conformed to ; the relation 
lapses ; the latter term can not be present to the mind ; 
we pass out of the sphere of thought into that which can 
not be a subject of thought, the unknown and the unknow- 

* For the answer to the objection that we thus ascribe anthropomorphic 
attributes to the Supreme Being, see infra. 



TRUE THINKING. 263 

able. "What takes place in this process is assumed to be 
this : We take certain phenomenal manifestations which 
we are able to observe and to describe. Out of the materials 
which these phenomenal manifestations give us, we ^*^ sym- 
bolize the Ultimate Eeality." We do this, by arguing 
from the phenomenal manifestations which convince us of 
the existence of a being whom we know and can observe, 
to the existence of a being in whom we '^symbolize" quali- 
ties and faculties which the phenomenal manifestations 
show us to belong to human beings. At the same time we 
represent to ourselves by the same symbolizing process a 
connection between the Ultimate Eeality and its manifes- 
tation, which is allied to the connections among the phe- 
nomenal manifestations which we observe in man, or in 
nature. In other words, we reason from what we see and 
can measure and describe, to that which we can not see or 
describe, and we end in a term of the relation which can 
not be present to the mindj and thus no thinkable relation 
can be framed. 

Whatever may be said of the rational force of the evi- 
dence derived from phenomenal manifestations which we 
can observe when we reason about other phenomenal mani- 
festations which we can not measure, it can not be said 
that we have reached a term in the relation that is beyond 
the sphere of thought. What I understand Mr. Spencer 
to mean when he speaks of *^ symbolizing" out of the 
materials which the phenomenal manifestations give us, 
may be a process liable to error, but it does not involve or 
lead to the *' insoluble difficulties" that are supposed to 
arise. For example, when, from the existence and power 
of man, a being whom we know, and whose phenomenal 
manifestations lead us to a knowledge of his limited facul- 
ties, we reason to the existence of a being whose faculties 
are boundless, we may be in danger of conclusions into 
which imperfection will find its way ; but it certainly is 



264 CKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

not true that in thinking of nnlimited power or goodness, 
or any other unlimited quality, we transcend the sphere of 
thought. When we have expressed in figures the greatest 
measurable idea of space that can be so expressed, what do 
we ** symbolize," when we say that beyond that measured 
space there stretches a space that we can not measure, and 
to which there is of necessity no limit ? Does a thinkable 
relation cease to exist, because one of the terms is immeas- 
urable to us ? As soon as we have formed an idea of a 
measurable portion of space, we necessarily have an idea of 
endless and immeasurable space ; and in this deduction we 
have employed no " symbol " formed out of the materials 
which the measurable manifestations have given us. "We 
have simply reached a conclusion that is inevitable. We are 
all the while thinking of space, whether it is definite space 
that we can measure, or indefinite space that we can not 
measure. 

When the moral and intellectual qualities of men con- 
stitute one part of the phenomenal manifestations which 
we adopt as the basis of reasoning to the existence of God, 
we are in danger of assigning to that being attributes of 
character which would be far from perfection. !N"early all 
the religions that have existed, and of which we have much 
knowledge — ^j^erhaps all of them but one — have displayed 
more or less of this tendency. It is only necessary to in- 
stance the Hebrew Scriptures, for there are parts of that 
narrative in which the Deity is represented as actuated by 
something very much like human passions and motives, 
and these representations are among the hardest things to 
be reconciled with the idea that those books were inspired 
writings. Every one knows with what effect these passages 
of the Hebrew Scriptures are used by those who reject both 
the Old and the New Testaments as inspired books. But 
is philosophy therefore to shrink from the use of materials 
with which the world is filled, and which lead to the con- 



TRUE THINKING. 265 

ception of a being of infinite faculties and perfect good- 
ness ? Grant all that may be said of the stupid and fatal 
errors into which men have been led by likening the Deity 
to man : there remains a yast store-house of materials on 
which to reason to the existence of God, which philosophy 
can not afford to reject, which can be freed from the peril 
that has often attended their use, and which involve no 
'^symbolizing" process of the kind which Mr. Spencer 
imagines. 

Let us again translate Mr. Spencer's language, and en- 
deavor to analyze his position. There is, he says, a law of 
thought, which requires and depends upon certain elements 
of thought. By '* thought " he means a conceivable idea, 
or one which the mind can represent to itself. By the ele- 
ments of thought he means, I suppose, the data which 
enable us to have an idea of a product. The process of 
reaching this product is supposed to be conducted accord- 
ing to a law which requires us to have the data or elements 
by which the process is to be conducted. For example, in 
the process of reaching an idea of definite space as a prod- 
uct of thought, we take certain data or elements, by con- 
ceiving of space as divided into successive portions to which 
we give the name of feet or miles. The product of thought 
is the number of feet or miles into which we divide the 
definite space of which we form an idea. In this process 
we have conformed to Mr. Spencer's law of thought, be- 
cause we have data or elements by which to conduct the 
process and reach the product. 

But now, says Mr. Spencer, when thought undertakes 
to have as its product the idea of endless space, it makes 
an effort to pass beyond its sphere ; the elements of thought 
fail, and therefore the law of thought fails ; the product 
is nothing but a dim symbol of a product ; the process 
becomes nothing but a dim symbol of a process ; and no 
predicament, that is, no fact, is here inferable from the 



266 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

law of tliouglit as a fact or predicament that can be asserted. 
But what, in the case supposed, is the fact or predicament 
that is asserted, when we speak or think of endless space, 
or of space that transcends all our powers of measurement ? 
Is it correct to say that the law of thought fails, because 
we can not express endless space in feet or miles ? Is it 
true that we have only " symbolized " the product of end- 
less space out of the data or elements of measurable space ? 
Here it is necessary to inquire what the learned philosopher 
means by " symbolizing " a product or a process. I under- 
stand him to mean, in the case supposed, that whereas in 
reference to the idea or product of a measurable space we 
have certain data or elements out of which to form that 
idea, when we undertake to think of endless space we 
transfer the notion of a measurable space to that of which 
no measure can be predicated, and therefore we can have 
no conception of endless space, but only a ** formless con- 
sciousness of the inscrutable." Let us see if this is sound. 
Take as a convenient idea of a measurable space the 
92,000,000 miles from the earth to the sun, and lay it down 
on paper. If, after having measured this space, we could 
transport ourselves to the sun, we could extend the line in 
the same direction beyond the sun, by laying down a fur- 
ther measurement of 92,000,000 miles from the sun to any 
object that we could observe beyond the sun. This process 
we could repeat indefinitely and forever, if we could be 
successively removed to the different stages at each point 
of departure. But when an aggregate of such multiplied 
measurements had been reached greater than could be ex- 
pressed in figures, we should still have the intellectual pow- 
er of thinking of an extension of space indefinitely beyond 
that which we have measured. JSTothing would have failed 
us but the power of expressing in figures the endless extent 
of space which lies beyond the utmost limit that we can 
so express. 



TRUE THIXKING. 267 

It is precisely here, as I suppose, tliat Mr. Spencer's 
"symbolizing process" and his *' symbolized product" 
come in. We have taken as the elements of thought the 
idea of successive measurements of space ; and the law of 
thought permits us to have as a definite product what- 
ever extent of space can be marked off by such successive 
measurements. But when we undertake to have, as the 
product of thought, a consciousness, or conception, of end- 
less s]3ace, we have merely used the idea of a definite space 
as a "symbol," or simulacrum, of that which is without 
form, and is only a "formless consciousness of the inscru- 
table " — whatever that means. 

Let us see what has happened. The power of measur- 
ing, or describing in form, a definite extent of space, has 
given us an idea of space. The product of our thought is 
extension between two given points. Such extensions must 
be capable of indefinite multiplication, although we can not 
express in figures an indefinite multiplicand. The product 
is then something beyond what we can express in a definite 
form ; but is it beyond the sphere of thought ? What is 
it ? It is an idea which we deduce by a strict process of 
reasoning, and to which we do not need to give and can not 
give expression in figures. The process of reasoning is this : 
Measurement has given us an idea of space ; our faculty 
of applying measurement is limited ; but our faculty of 
conceiving of space through which we could go on forever 
multipljdng such measurements, if we had the means, is 
certainly a faculty of which all men are conscious who are 
accustomed to analyze the processes of thought. In this 
process we may reach that which in one sense is "inscru- 
table." It is inscrutable, inasmuch as we can not under- 
stand how eternity of space or time came to exist. Our 
experience of phenomena enables us to have an idea of 
space and time, and from the fact that we have measured 

off portions of space or time, we deduce the fact that there 
13 



L 



268 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

must be an eternity of both. It is immaterial whether we 
call this a *' symbolizing" process, or call it something else. 
The product is an idea at which we arrive by a strict pro- 
cess of reasoning. Eternity of space or time is an inscru- 
table idea, when we attempt to inquire how it came to be. 
That it exists, is an idea from which the human mind can 
not escape, and which it reaches by a perfectly sound de- 
duction. We are all the while thinking of space or time, 
whether we are thinking of that which is measurable, or of 
that which is immeasurable. 

I now come to a passage in Mr. Spencer's recent article 
which it is necessary to attempt to explain to the unlearned 
reader, and to bring it, if possible, within the reach of 
ordinary minds. This passage, which follows in his recent 
article immediately after his quotation from his " Essays," 
is the following : 

Thus, then, criticisms like this of Mr. Martineau, often recurring 
in one shape or other, and now again made hj Mr. Harrison, do not 
show the invaHdity of my argument, but once more show the 
imbecility of human intelligence when brought to bear on the ulti- 
mate question. Phenomenon without noumenon is unthinkable; 
and yet noumenon can not be thought of in the true sense of think- 
ing. We are at once obliged to be conscious of a reality behind 
appearance, and yet can neither bring this consciousness of reality 
into any shape, nor can bring into any shape its connection with 
appearance. The forms of our thought, molded on experience of 
phenomena, as well as the connotations of our words formed to ex- 
press the relations of phenomena, involve us in contradictions when 
we try to think of that which is beyond phenomena ; and yet the 
existence of that which is beyond phenomena is a necessary datum 
alike of our thoughts and our words. We have no choice but to 
accept a formless consciousness of the inscrutable. 

Some definitions must now be given. The word '^phe- 
nomenon " has become naturalized in our English tongue. 
Derived as a noun from the Greek verb <^atVoftat, to ap- 
pear , it means anything visible ; whatever is presented to 



PHENOMENOiT AND ]!fOUMENON. 269 

the eye by obserration or experiment, or wbat is discov- 
ered to exist ; as the phenomena of the natural world, the 
phenomena of the heavenly bodies, of terrestrial substances, 
the phenomena of heat and color.* In this application the 
word denotes what appears to us, or what we discover by 
our senses. It is also used, in the plural, more loosely, to 
denote occurrences or things which we observe to happen ; 
as when, speaking of physical occurrences, we ijiean physi- 
cal facts the happening of which we observe. Moral phe- 
nomena, on the other hand, are the appearances exhibited 
by the action of mind. 

The word noumenon has not become naturalized in our 
language, and did not exist in Greek, f It can convey no 
intelligible meaning to common readers without tracing its 
derivation, and when it is analyzed we can attribute to it 
no meaning but a purely arbitrary one, even if we can 
arrive at that arbitrary signification. In fact, it is a word 
made by and for the school of Kant. Its first syllable is 
the Grreek noun vov<s or voo^, which corresponds to our 
English word thouglit or intelligence. The Greek verb 
voeo), to tJiinh, was primarily used as I perceive ; the act of 
the mind in seeing. This idea was distinct from ctSw, 
which conveyed the plain meaning of I see. But so subtile 
were the Greeks in their use of words, that ctSw was some- 
times used specifically to mean to see with the mind's eye, 
or, as we sometimes say, to realize, or to have a mental 
perception of. In the Greek use of the two words voew and 
€tS<i), no distinction was made between phenomenon and 

* Webster's Dictionary, " Phenomenon." 

f Our other American lexicographer, Worcester, who was pretty strict 
in regard to the words which he admitted into the English language, gives 
the word " noumenon," but he was careful to designate its arbitrary use. 
His definition is this : 

" Noumenon, n. [Gr. voDy, the mind.] In the philosophy of Kant, an 
object in itself, not relatively to us ; opposed to phenomenon. Fleming.'''' 



270 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

noumenon. To a cultivated Greek, phenomenon would 
mean sometliing perceiyed, and noumenon, if he had pos- 
sessed the word, would have had the same meaning. He 
would have used the two words interchangeably, to express 
either sight by the visual organs or mental perception. Mr. 
Spencer uses them as if they meant different things, as if 
phenomenon were something different from noumenon. 
But noumenon, according to its derivation (for it is coined 
as the participle of voeo)), means a thing, subject, or object, 
perceived hy the mind. The root idea is mind-action, the 
verb voeo) meaning to do what the mind does in apprehend- 
ing a subject or object. So that the derivation of nou- 
menon does not help us to understand the Kantian or Spen- 
cerian use of the word. 

As this use of the word is, then, purely arbitrary, we 
must try to understand, as well as we can, what this arbi- 
trary meaning is. As well as I can fathom it, in contrast 
with phenomenon, the meaning is that phenomenon is some- 
thing that we see, and noumenon is the ghost or double 
of what we see. We see a thing with our eyes ; but our 
mind does not see it — it perceives its ghostly double. This 
is noumenon. 

Penetrating, or trying to penetrate, a little further into 
Mr. Spencer's meaning, it would seem that when he says 
that phenomenon without noumenon is unthinkable, he 
means that, although we can see a thing with our corporeal 
eye, we can not think of it without the mental act of see- 
ing its image with the mind's eye ; and then he adds that 
noumenon can not be thought of in the true sense of think- 
ing, because nouynenon is an abstraction or a mere ghost of 
a subject or an object. 

What is all this but a kind of play upon words ? We 
are so constituted that the impressions which a thing ex- 
ternal to us produces upon our nerves of perception are 
instantly transmitted to the brain, and the mind has an in- 



CONCEPTION OF ENDLESS SPACE. 271 

stantaneous perception of that object. The phenomenon 
which we see with our eyes, or become sensible of by touch, 
thus becomes a thing perceived by the mind, and when we 
think of it we do not think of its ghost, but we think of 
the thing itself. Did Laura Bridgman, who had neither 
eye-sight nor hearing nor speech, but who acquired all her 
ideas of external objects by the sense of touch, conceive of 
a round or a square, a, rough or a smooth surface, by con- 
templating the ghost or double of what she touched ? And 
had she no thinking in the true sense of thinking, because 
the double, or imago of the thing which she touched — the 
so-called noumenon — was at once necessary to her mental 
perception, and yet could not be thought of without seeing 
the object by the corporeal eye ? She had no corporeal eye 
in which there was any vision. All her mental perceptions 
of external objects were acquired by the sense of touch 
alone ; and we may well believe that she did not need the 
supposed noumenon to give her an idea of phenomenon. 
She perceived many phenomena by the simple transmission 
to her brain, along her nerves of touch, of the impressions 
produced upon them by external objects ; and there is 
every reason to believe that many of her perceptions were 
as accurate and true as those which we derive from all our 
senses. We may now dismiss Mr. Spencer's distinction 
between phenomenon and noumenon as a distinction quite 
needless for the elucidation of what takes place in think- 
ing of that which is behind appearance, and may proceed 
with the discussion of what remains of the passage above 
quoted. 

At the risk of wearying by repetition, I will again resort 
to the illustration before employed, and will again describe 
how we reach the conception, for example, of endless space. 
According to Mr. Spencer, space, or extension, as a think- 
able idea, or a subject of thought, is confined to a measur- 
able extent of space. This is the phenomenon, or appear- 



272 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

ance. All our forms of thouglifc are, it is said, molded on 
our experience of phenomena that are measurable, or capa- 
ble of being definitely described ; and the connotations of 
our words which express the relations of phenomena relate 
to phenomena that we measure, or see, and can definitely 
describe. Therefore, we can not think of a reality that is 
behind appearance ; can not bring the consciousness of 
such a reality into any shape, nor bring* into any shape its 
connection with appearance. 

If mankind are neyer to think of that which is behind 
appearance— can never think of a reality that is behind 
what they see— because their forms of thought are molded 
on experiences of phenomena that they see, and because 
the connotations of their words express the relations of 
those phenomena and no others, a vast domain of thinking 
is necessarily closed to them. This is not the experience of 
our minds. Every day of our lives we go on in search of 
that which is beyond appearance, and we find it. Take 
again, for example, the phenomena of a measurable portion 
of space or time. What appears to us gives an idea of 
space and time. We measure as great a portion of either 
as our forms of expression admit of our describing by defi- 
nite terms, but we are immediately conscious of another 
reality, an endless extension or duration, because we are 
conscious that we have not exhausted and can not exhaust, 
by our measurements and descriptions, the whole possible 
existence of space or time. This new reality behind ap- 
pearance is just as truly thinkable, just as true a conscious- 
ness, as is the measurable portion of time or space ; for it 
is time or space of which we are constantly thinking, 
whether it is an extent or duration which we can describe 
in words, or whether we can only say that it is extent or 
duration without beginning and without end. Our minds 
are so constituted that the existence which is manifested to 
us by observable phenomena leads us to go behind the ap- 



AGITOSTICISM. 273 

pearance in search of another reality beyond that which is 
manifested by the phenomena that we see. All that is in- 
scrutable about this other reality that lies behind appear- 
ance is that we can not understand how it came to be, any 
more than we can understand how the phenomenon which 
we see and can measure and describe in a definite form 
came to exist. We do not bring, and do not need to bring, 
this other reality into connection with appearance. We 
first have an idea of space and time from observable and 
measurable phenomena. The reality of extension without 
limit, and duration without end, follows of necessity, by a 
process of thought which we can not escape. 

But now it becomes needful to answer a further objection. 
I have said that we are all the while thinking of space, 
whether it is a measurable and limited or an immeasurable 
and illimitable space. Mr. Spencer, anticipating this ob- 
vious statement, admits that the form of relation between 
the two ideas, although *^ almost blank," preserves a cer- 
tain qualitative character ; that is, it is of the quality of 
space of which we think, whether it is measurable or im- 
measurable, and therefore it remains ^^a vaguely identifia- 
ble relation." But when, in place of one of the terms of 
the relation qualitatively the same as the other, we substi- 
tute an existence that can not be defined, and is therefore 
both quantitatively and qualitatively unrepresentable, the 
relation, he asserts, lapses entirely ; one of the terms be- 
comes wholly *' unknowable." 

I will not again repeat that extension or magnitude 
having no known limits is a thinkable term, because the 
subject of thought is the quality of extension or magnitude ; 
quantity not being essential to the idea of extension or 
magnitude. But I will pass to the idea of an existence 
which can not be defined. I suppose that by an existence 
is meant a being. If we undertake to think of a being 
whose quality we do not know to be the same as the quality 



274 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

of another being whom we do know, and the quantity of 
whose powers and faculties we can not measure, we pro- 
pose, says Mr. Spencer, a term of impossible thought, be- 
cause the law of thought can not be conformed to ; the 
term can not be present to the mind, and no thinkable re- 
lation can be framed. Let this supposed difficulty be tested 
by a plain inquiry into that which we undertake to make 
the subject of thought when we think of a being who is 
said to be "unknowable." 

"Agnosticism" is a doctrine which eludes a definite 
grasp. I have seen it defined by one of its most distin- 
guished professors in this way: "Agnosticism is of the 
essence of science, whether ancient or modern. It simply 
means that a man shall not say he knows or belieyes that 
which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know 
or believe. . . . Agnosticism simply says that we know 
nothing of what may be beyond phenomena."* Mankind 
are apt to be rather practical in their habits of thinking: 
experience teaches them that there is a well-founded dis- 
tinction between knowledge and belief, when it comes to 
be a question of asserting the one or the other, f They 
find, too, by experience that, in regard to what they speak 
of when they say that they know a thing, there is a dis- 
tinction to be observed in respect to the means of knowl- 
edge. No one hesitates to say that he knows there was 

* Prof. Huxley, who claims a sort of patent right or priority of inven- 
tion in the term and doctrine " agnosticism." 

f " There are some things I know and some things I believe," said the 
Syrian ; " I know that I have a soul, and I believe that it is immortal." . . . 

" I wish I could assure myself of the personality of the Creator," said 
Lothair ; " I cling to that, but they say it is unphilosophical ! " " In what 
sense," asked the Syrian, "is it more unphilosophical to believe in a 
personal God, omnipotent and omniscient, than in natural forces, uncon- 
scious and irresistible ? Is it unphilosophical to combine power with intel- 
ligence ? " — BisraelVs ^'- Lothair y 



AGNOSTICISM. 275 

such a man as Napoleon Bonaparte, although he never 
saw him, and although our knowledge of him is now de- 
riyed from hearsay. But when we speak of knowing that a 
certain living person was at a certain spot on a certain day, 
we become immediately aware that in order to justify the 
assertion we or some one ought to have seen the person at 
the time and place, especially if anything important de- 
pends upon the assertion. There are a great many things 
that we say we know without scientific or other rigorous 
proof, and there are a great many other things which we 
do not say that we know without the kind of proof which 
is required. All our actions in life proceed upon this dis- 
tinction, and we could not live in this world with any com- 
fort if we did not act upon the assumption that we know 
things of which we have no scientific proof. 

/A very clever /ew d'' esprit weut the rounds of the peri- 
odical press some time ago, in which a well-born and highly 
educated young agnostic was represented as losing his birth- 
right, his fiancee, and all his prospects in life, because he 
demanded rigorous proof of everything that affected him. 
As he would not admit that he was the son of his own 
parents, without having better proof of it than their as- 
sertioD, he was turned out-of-doors and disinherited. He 
would not accept the bloom on the cheek of his mistress as 
natural unless she gave him her word that she did not 
paint ; and he would not admit that they loved each other 
without some better proof than their mutual feelings, 
about which they might be mistaken. The young lady 
indignantly dismissed him, but he consoled himself as a 
martyr to the truth of agnosticism. He became tutor to 
the son of a nobleman, whose belief in the boy's extraordi- 
nary talents, although justified by his progress in his stud- 
ies, the tutor would not admit had the requisite proof. 
He propounded his denial of what the father had no proper 
grounds for maintaining, in an offensive way, and of course 



276 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

he lost his place. He retired to a sort of agnostic brother- 
hood, glorying in his adhesion to truth. Some of his com- 
panions remained long enough in the brotherhood to find 
out that they were making fools of themselyes, and at the 
first opportunity for acting on the ordinary grounds of 
knowing a fact without rigorous demonstration of it they 
left him in solitude, went into the world, and achieved 
success. / 

"A man shall not say he knows or believes that which 
he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or be- 
lieve." By "scientific grounds," I presume is meant, in 
the case of a fact or occurrence, proper proof of the fact 
or occurrence. This varies with the nature of the thing 
which one professes to know. We constantly act upon 
proofs which do not amount to demonstration, and there 
could be no practical enjoyment of our lives and no safety 
if we did not. If a government were to receive informa- 
tion that a foreign army was on the border of the country 
and about to invade it, and the information fell short of 
being the testimony of eye-witnesses, what would be thought 
of the rulers if they were to fold their hands and say that 
they did not know the fact because they had no " scientific 
grounds for professing to know it " ? On the other hand, 
if in a court of justice the question to be determined were 
the presence of an individual at a certain place and at a 
certain time, the established rules of evidence require cer- 
tain kinds of proof of the fact. 

Belief, however, is a conviction of something which may 
or may not require what are called " scientific grounds " 
before we can be permitted to profess that we believe. It 
depends upon the thing which we profess to believe, and 
upon the grounds on which we rest the belief, whether we 
have or have not safe and sufficient means of belief. Be- 
lief in the law of gravitation as a force operating through- 
out the universe is arrived at as a deduction from scientific 



REALITY BEHIND APPEARANCE. 277 

data. Belief in an existence beyond phenomena, in a be- 
ing who is the producing agent of the phenomena, depends 
upon a great yariety of grounds, some of which are scien- 
tific data and some of which are the elements of moral 
reasoning. We may not say that we ^^hnow^^ that God or 
any other supernatural being exists, but we may say that we 
^'believe^^ in his existence. Here knowledge is one thing ; 
belief is another. Knowledge of the existence of God, like 
knowledge of the existence of any other being, might come 
to us through the testimony of a competent witness com- 
missioned and authorized to inform us. Belief in the exist- 
ence of God may be founded on many and yarious grounds 
without the direct testimony of the competent witness ; 
and these grounds may be perfectly satisfactory without 
being mathematical or scientific demonstration. It is a yery 
remarkable fact that some of the most eminent of the 
school of agnosticism profess to haye, and probably haye, 
the most undoubting faith in the theory and actual occur- 
rence of animal eyolution, without any data, scientific or 
other, which can enable other men to arriye at the same 
conyiction, whateyer may be the character of the supposed 
proofs. They certainly haye no grounds for professing to 
know that an eyolution of species out of species has eyer 
taken place ; and the grounds of their belief in the fact, 
whether denominated " scientific " or called something else, 
do not satisfy the rules of belief on which mankind must 
act, in accordance with their mental and moral constitu- 
tions ; and this belief does not rise any higher in the scale 
of moral probabilities than the belief in special creations, 
nor does it rise so high. But to return to Mr. Spencer. 

If we did not act upon the process of thinking of an- 
other reality than that which appearance giyes, act upon 
it fearlessly and by a mode of thinking to which we can 
safely trust ourselyes, science would stand still, there would 
be no progress in physics, discoyeries would cease, there 






278 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

would be no improvement in morals, the world would re- 
main stationary. What did Columbus do, when, going 
behind the phenomena that made the earth appear to be a 
flat surface, he thought of it as a sphere ? Did he break 
the law of thought ? He formed an idea of a reality be- 
hind appearance, not by employing the phenomenal mani- 
festations to help him to the new conception, but by going 
away from them in search of a reality that lay behind 
them, and which they seemed to contradict. This concep- 
tion of a sphere as the reality of the earth's condition 
proved to be the truth. He did not bring it, and did not 
need to bring it, into connection with appearance. He did 
not use, and did not need to use, the relations of the visible 
phenomena to help him to attain his conception of a spheri- 
cal form of the earth. He contradicted them all. 

Did all the moral lawgivers who have reformed the 
world break the law of thought, when, going behind the 
phenomena of human conduct, with their relations point- 
ing to one idea of right and wrong, they conceived the idea 
of a new and a better rule of life ? When it was said, in 
place of the old law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a 
tooth, " Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute 
you " — when for the old rule of revenge there was substi- 
tuted forgiveness of injuries — something was inculcated 
that contradicted all the appearances of the social phe- 
nomena, and that lay beyond them. Did the conscious- 
ness of this new reality become '' a formless consciousness 
of the inscrutable" ? What is there about it that is in- 
scrutable ? There is nothing inscrutable about it, or in the 
consciousness of it, excepting the mode in which the being 
who promulgated it came to exist. The idea of forgiveness 
is clearly within the compass of human thought and of 
human endeavor. 

When we are in the process of making a new physical 
discovery, or of forming a new rule of moral action, we 



REALITY BEHIND APPEARANCE. 279 

work away from the materials which the phenomenal 
manifestations giye ns, to a new conception. We become 
conscious of a new reality behind appearance, and of an 
existence beyond the relations of the phenomena with which 
we haye heretofore been familiar. It is to this striving after 
realities behind appearances — striying by an entirely true 
process of thinking — that the world owes its progress. 

When the phenomenal manifestations of an intellectual 
and moral nature in man haye giyen us the idea of an ex- 
istence of an intellectual and moral being as a reality of 
which we become conscious, what is to prevent us from 
thinking of another intellectual and moral being as a real- 
ity, with faculties and powers immeasurably superior to 
ours? It is true that the phenomenal manifestations of 
man's intellectual and moral nature give us an idea of a 
being of very limited faculties and very imperfect moral 
qualities. But what is the ^'insoluble difficulty" in which 
we become inyolyed, when we think of a being whose facul- 
ties are boundless, and whose moral nature is perfect ? 
Does the '^ insoluble difficulty" consist in the impossibility 
of thinking of that which transcends all our powers of 
measurement ? All that we have done, in the case of man, 
is to have a consciousness of a being whose phenomenal 
manifestations evince the existence of an intellectual and 
moral nature. He happens to be a being of very limited 
faculties and very imperfect moral characteristics. What 
prevents us from thinking, in the true sense of thinking, of 
another being, whose powers are without limit, and whose 
moral nature is perfect ? Is it said that we can not bring 
into any shape the idea of unlimited power or of perfect 
goodness, or bring into any shape its connection with ap- 
pearance, because all our ideas of power and goodness, all 
our forms of thought and expression, are molded on ex- 
periences of limited power and imperfect goodness ? The 
truth is that we do not and need not strive to bring into 



280 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

connection with appearance the idea of any quality which 
we conceiye of as unlimited. What we derive from the 
phenomenal manifestations of human power and goodness 
is a consciousness of the qualities of power and goodness. 
It is perfectly correct thinking to reason that these quali- 
ties, whose phenomenal manifestations, in the case of man, 
show that in him they exist only in a limited degree, may 
exist in another being in unlimited perfection and without 
degree. Our minds are so constituted that we reason from 
the finite to the infinite, by obserying that one class of 
phenomena evince the existence of the finite and another 
class of phenomena evince the existence of the infinite. 

When, therefore, we pass from the phenomenal mani- 
festations of human power and goodness, we come into the 
presence of other phenomena which we know could not be 
and were not produced by such a limited and imperfect 
being as man, but which must yet have had an author, a 
maker, an originator, a creator. We thus contemplate and 
investigate facts which show that the phenomena were the 
products of a skill, wisdom, and power that transcend all 
measurement. Is it said that the phenomena of nature, 
stupendous and varied and minute and wonderful as they 
are, evince only that a certain degree of power and wisdom 
was exerted in their production, even if their production is 
attributed to a being competent to bring them about ? 
And therefore that the idea of a being of unlimited facul- 
ties and perfect goodness is as far as ever from our reach 
by any true process of thought ? This assumption begs 
something that should not be taken for granted. It as- 
sumes that the production of the phenomena of nature 
does not evince unlimited power and perfect goodness ; did 
not call for the existence of boundless faculties and inex- 
haustible benevolence ; involved only a degree of such qual- 
ities, although a vastly superior degree to that possessed 
by us. The correctness of this assumption depends upon 



DEITY UNLIMITED. 281 

the force of the evidence which nature affords of the char- 
acter of the Deity. It is an assumption which has led to 
enormous errors — errors of conception and belief which 
impute to the Supreme Being only a superior degree of 
power and wisdom, greater than our own, but still limited 
and imperfect, liable to error, and acting in modes which 
distress us with contradictions and inconsistencies. 

It may without rashness be asserted that the phenomena 
of the universe could not have been produced by a power 
and wisdom that were subject to any limitations. While 
all the researches of science, from the first beginnings of 
human observation to the present moment, show that in 
the production of the phenomena of nature there has been 
exerted a certain amount of power and wisdom, they also 
show that it is an amount which we can not measure ; that 
there is, moreover, a power and wisdom that have not been 
exhausted ; that the reserved force and skill and benevo- 
lence are without limit. For, in every successive new dis- 
covery that we make, in every new revelation of the power 
and goodness which our investigations bring forth, we con- 
tinuously reach proofs of an endless capacity, an inexhaust- 
ible variety of methods and of products. So that, if we con- 
ceive of the whole human race, with all its accumulated 
knowledge, as ending at last in one individual possessed of 
all that has been learned on earth, and imagine him to be 
then translated to another state of existence, with all his fac- 
ulties of observation and study preserved, and new fields of 
inquiry to be opened to him, his experience on earth would 
lead him to expect to find, and we must believe that in his 
new experience he will find, that the physical and the moral 
phenomena of the universe are an inexhaustible study ; 
that search and discovery must go on forever ; and that 
forever new revelations of power and goodness will be made 
to the perceptions whose training began in a very limited 
sphere. His experience in that limited sphere has taught 



282 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

him. that there was no end to the discoveries which were 
here partially within his reach. His experience in the new 
sphere will be a continuation of his experience in the old 
one ; for there is a law by which we judge of the future by 
the past. This law is one of the conditions of our intel- 
lectual existence ; an inevitable habit of our minds ; im- 
posed upon us by an inexorable but familiar authority. 
Our experience in this life has taught us that, in the inves- 
tigation of the phenomena of nature that are open to our 
observation here, we have never reached the end of pos- 
sible discovery ; that every fresh discovery has evinced that 
there are still new things to be learned, new manifestations 
of power to be revealed, new products and new methods to 
be seen. However long we may suppose the human race to 
exist on earth and its researches to be prosecuted here, we 
must suppose an endless accumulation of knowledge here- 
after, because the law which compels us to judge of the 
future by the past obliges us to accept as the fruition of 
the future that which has been the fruition of the past.* 

Is there in this any violation of the true law of thought ? 
Does the relation between our* past experience and the ex- 
perience which we forecast for the future fade into a dim 
symbol of a relation ? On the contrary, both are equally 
capable of mental representation ; for we are mentally so 

* The practice of judging of the future by the past is sometimes treated 
as if it were a mere habit of the uncultivated and undisciplined part of 
mankind — a kind of mental weakness. Undoubtedly, our past experience 
is not always an infallible guide to what is to be our experience in the fu- 
ture. We often have to correct our past experience, by carefully separat- 
ing the accidental from the essential ; by more comprehensive analysis of 
the facts which constitute our former experience. But when we have full, 
comprehensive, and accurate views of that which has happened to us here- 
tofore, our beliefs in what is to happen to us hereafter are not only attained 
by a safe process of reasoning, but that process is imposed upon us by a 
law of our mental constitution. 



THE ULTIMATE QUESTION. 283 

constituted that the consciousness of what has happened to 
us in the past — the unending succession of new discoveries, 
the constant accumulation of knowledge, which we have 
experienced here — gives us the conception of the same end- 
less progress hereafter, compels us to believe in it, and ena- 
bles us to grasp it as a product of true thought. 

Mr. Spencer has much to say of ^'the imbecility of 
human intelligence when brought to bear on the ultimate 
question." What is the ultimate question ? The ultimate 
question with which science and philosophy are concerned 
is the existence of the Supreme Being. It is of the utmost 
consequence for us to understand wherein consists the im- 
becility of human intelligence when brought to bear upon 
this question of the existence of God. How does our im- 
becility manifest itself ? What is the point beyond which 
thought can not go ? We become conscious of the exist- 
ence of the being called man, because, from the phenomena 
which we know that he produces by the exercise of his will 
and power, and which we know must have had an author and 
producer, we deduce an existence beyond the phenomena, 
an actor in their production. What more, or what that is 
different, do we do or undertake to do, when, from the 
phenomena of nature which we know that man did not 
produce, we think of another existence beyond the phenom- 
ena ? In both cases, we study the phenomena by our 
senses and powers of observation ; in both cases we reason 
that there is an actor who produces the phenomena ; yet 
the existence of the actor who produces the phenomena is 
inscrutable in the case of the Deity in the same sense and 
for the same reason that it is inscrutable in the case of man. 
How the human mind came to exist, by what process it was 
made to exist, by what means it was created, what was the 
genesis of the human intellect, is just as inscrutable, no 
more and no less so, as the mode in which the Deity came 
to exist. In both cases the existence of a being is what we 



284 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

think of ; and when we think of either being we think 
of that which is beyond phenomena but which we deduce 
from phenomena. In neither case do we ** accept a formless 
consciousness of the inscrutable"; for what we accept is 
the consciousness of a being, and it is not a consciousness of 
the mode in which he came to exist. The latter conscious- 
ness is the inscrutable problem. The existence is what we 
think of, and we think of it by a perfectly true process of 
thought, deducing it from the simple truth that the phe- 
nomena must have had an actor in their production. "We 
do not undertake to think of the process by which man 
was created, or of the mode in which that other existence 
came to be without beginning and without end. 

I have thus discriminated between what we do and what 
we do not think of, when we think of an existence beyond 
phenomena, but which we deduce from phenomena. This 
is a most necessary discrimination ; for, in thinking of the 
existence, we do not try to think how it came to be an ex- 
istence. We think only of the existence ; and we deduce 
it from our observation and study of phenomena, which 
teach us that they must have had an actor, an author, a 
producer, and that they did not produce or create them- 
selves. 

It remains for me to advert to Mr. Spencer's theory of 
the origin of the religious consciousness, or the origin of 
the idea of supernatural beings, and hence of one highest 
supernatural being. This is his ghost-theory. He has re- 
cently told us that in his "Descriptive Sociology" — a 
work commenced in 1867, and which preceded his " Prin- 
ciples of Sociology" (written in 1874) — he caused to be 
gathered adequate materials for generalization, consisting 
of a great number of excerpts from the writings of travelers 
and historians who have given accounts of the religious be- 
liefs of the uncivilized races. He numbers 697 of these 
extracts which refer to the ghost-theory, and only 87 which 



MR. SPENCER'S GHOST-THEORY. 285 

refer to fetichism. This great ratio of eight to one lie con- 
siders overwhelming proof that the ghost-theory, as opposed 
to fetichism, is sustained by the beliefs of a vast majority 
of the uncivilized races. What if it is ? What is the 
ghost-theory, and what is fetichism, as the chief source and 
origin of religion ? Mr. Spencer, in his recent article, ex- 
plains fetichism as most persons understand it, namely, 
the worship of inanimate objects, or belief in their super- 
natural powers. The ghost- theory, which his 697 extracts 
illustrate, is "the belief in a wandering double, which goes 
away during sleep, or fainting, and deserts the body for a 
longer period at death ; a double which can enter and pos- 
sess other persons, causing disease, epilepsy, insanity, etc., 
which gives rise to ideas of spirits, demons, etc. , and which 
originates propitiation and worship of ghosts."* Further 
on, he reiterates his ghost-theory as the origin of religious 
beliefs, and explains it thus : 

Setting out with the statement that "unlike the ordinary con- 
sciousness, the religious consciousness is concerned with that which 
lies beyond the sphere of sense," I went on to show that the rise of 
this consciousness begins among primitive men with the belief in a 
double belonging to each individual, which, capable of wandering 
away from him during life, becomes his ghost or spirit after death ; 
and that from this idea of a being eventually distinguished as super- 
natural, there develop, in course of time, the ideas of supernatural 
beings of all orders up to the highest. Mr. Harrison has alleged that 
the primitive religion is not belief in and propitiation of the ghost, 
but is worship of " physical objects treated frankly as physical ob- 
jects " (p. 498). That he has disproved the one view and proved 
the other, no one will, I think, assert. Contrariwise, he has given 
occasion for me to cite weighty authorities against him. 

Next it was contended that in the assemblage of supernatural 
beings thus originating in each tribe, some, derived from chiefs, 
were superior to others ; and that, as the compounding and recom- 
pounding of tribes gave origin to societies having social grades and 

* " Nineteenth Century" for November, 1884, p. 827. 



286 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

rulers of different orders, there resulted that conception of a hier- 
archy of ghosts or gods which polytheism shows us. Further it 
was argued that while, with the growth of civilization and knowl- 
edge, the minor supernatural agents became merged in the major 
supernatural agent, this single great supernatural agent, gradually 
losing the anthropomorphic attributes at first ascribed, has come in 
our days to retain but few of them ; and, eventually losing these, 
will then merge into a consciousness of an Omnipresent Power to 
which no attributes can be ascribed. This proposition has not been 
contested. 

Without entering into any consideration of wliat Mr. 
Harrison has disproved or proved, as between fetichism and 
the ghost-theory, I will now ask why the beliefs of the un- 
civilized races, or of the primitive men, should be regarded 
as important evidence of the origin of beliefs among civ- 
ilized and cultivated men ? Is modern philosophy, in ac- 
counting for or justifying the belief in a Supreme Being 
which is held to-day by most of the cultivated and educated 
part of mankind, to assign its origin to the primitive and 
uncivilized men ? Is the whole idea of a supernatural 
being to be regarded as traditionally handed down from 
our barbarian ancestors ? Is there no other source from 
which we can derive that idea ? Are we none of us capable 
of finding for ourselves rational grounds of belief in a su- 
pernatural agent, deducing his existence from a study of 
nature ? Or must we trace this belief back through the 
ages until we arrive at an origin which we shall of course 
despise ? What has philosophy to do now with '* the 
primitive religion " ? Is there nothing that science and 
reason and disciplined methods of thought and sound 
deduction can teach us ? Are we to throw away all the 
proofs which nature spreads before us, and for the investi- 
gation of which we have accumulated so many facilities, 
and turn to the beliefs of uncivilized men ? Are the con- 
ceptions of supernatural beings, to which a barbarian at- 



DEVELOPMEITT OF A FIRST CAUSE. 287 

tained, to be taken as the origin of the conception of a 
personal God to which an educated philosopher can now 
attain ? And because of the inadequate and childish super- 
stitions of the past, and of their growth into a belief of one 
supreme supernatural agent — whatever that idea of him may 
have been — is the consciousness which we have of a per- 
sonal God to be hereafter merged into a consciousness of 
an Omnipresent Power to which no attributes can be as- 
cribed ? 

It should seem that the mode in which philosophy, after 
it came to be cultivated by civilized thinkers and observers, 
freed itself first from fetichism and the ghost-theory and 
all the beliefs of polytheism, next from physical agents as 
the causes of all phenomena, and finally attained an inde- 
pendent conception of a First Cause as a supreme personal 
intelligence and power, is worthy of some consideration. 

In the first chapter of this work, borrowing from the 
English scholar and critic, Mr. Grote, I have given a con- 
densed account of some of the systems of Greek philosophy 
which began in the first half of the sixth century before 
Christ, and extended down to Plato, whose life was em- 
braced in 427-347 of the ante-Christian era. About 150 
B. c, the Greek philosophy, and especially the speculations 
of Plato, encountered at Alexandria the monotheism of the 
Hellenizing Jews.* This history of Greek philosophy, as 
developed by Mr. Grote, shows that the struggle against 
polytheistic agencies, as the causes of natural phenomena, 
began with efforts to find purely physical agencies ; that 
this struggle, in spite of the surrounding beliefs in a mul- 
titude of supernatural beings of different orders, was long 
continued, and gave rise to a most remarkable variety of 
scientific explanations ; that it passed through an extraor- 
dinary number of physical theories, until at length in Plato 

* Grotc's " Plato," iii, pp. 284, 285. 



288 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

there was developed the idea of a distinct personal con- 
structive actor, the Demiurgus, a being to whom, whether 
intended by Plato as a philosophical myth, or as an entity 
in which he had something of faith or conviction, he as- 
signed the formation of his Kosmos. With characteristic 
acumen, the English commentator points out Plato's skill 
in eluding the possible charge of infidelity to the established 
religion of Athens, while he at the same time propounded 
the existence of a personal First Cause that was in a strik- 
ing degree inconsistent with the popular faith. The whole 
course of this history of Greek speculation evinces that 
from an early period the Greek philosophers were utter 
skeptics in regard to the popular religion and the j)oetic 
traditions ; that they not only did not derive anything from 
the primitive religion, from fetichism, from the ghost- 
beliefs of their barbarian ancestors — if their ancestors had 
such beliefs — or from their heroic ages, or from the multi- 
tudinous gods of the popular theology and the poj)ular 
worship, or from the old poetical imagery, but that they 
strove to get away from all these sources, and to construct 
theories of the universe that would explain the ultimate 
cause or causes in a very different manner. The earliest 
Greek speculators got no further in their theories than the 
construction of systems of physical agencies, or agencies 
that stood to them in the quality of physical actors. Plato, 
on the other hand, resorted to the conception of a supreme 
personal actor. 

Mr. Grote has further mentioned a very striking fact, 
which is, that before the Christian era, the Demiurgus of 
Plato was received by the Hellenizing Jews at Alexandria as 
a conception kindred to the God of Moses. His statement, 
in substance the same as that previously made by a Con- 
tinental critic, Gfrorer, is so interesting and important 
that I quote his words : *^ But though the idea of a pre- 
kosmic Demiurgus found little favor among the Grecian 



PLATO'S DEMITJKGUS. 289 

schools of philosophy before the Christian era, it was great- 
ly welcomed among the Hellenizing Jews at Alexandria, 
from Aristobulus (about b. c. 150) down to Philo. It 
formed the suitable point of conjunction between Hellenic 
and Judaic speculation. The marked distinction drawn by 
Plato between the Demiurgus, and the constructed or gen- 
erated Kosmos, with its in-dwelling gods, provided a suit- 
able place for the Supreme God of the Jews, degrading the 
pagan gods by comparison. The ' Timseus ' was compared 
with the book of Genesis, from which it was even affirmed 
that Plato had copied. He received the denomination of 
the Atticising Moses — Moses writing in Attic Greek. It 
was thus that the Platonic * Timaeus ' became the medium 
of transition from the polytheistic theology, which served 
as philosophy among the early ages of Greece, to the om- 
nipotent monotheism to which philosophy became subordi- 
nated after the Christian era." * 

Perhaps there is no more remarkable fact than this in 
the whole history of philosophical speculation. Possibly 
Mr. Spencer would say that it adds another proof to his 
ghost-theory. But the important fact is that Plato's Demi- 
urgus partakes in no degree of the ghost idea, and, instead 
of being a modification of that idea, is an original and per- 
fectly independent conception. The Demiurgus of Plato 
is not a chief spirit evolved in imagination out of a hier- 
archy of spirits. He is himself the originator and fash- 
ioner of the gods, of whom he makes use as ministers in 
the formation of the bodies of the primitive men, after he 
has himself formed the souls which are to inhabit them for 
a season. 

It appears, by Mr. G rote's citations from Gfrorer, that 
the latter had previously noted what Aristobulus main- 
tained one hundred and fifty years earlier than Philo, 

* Grote's "Plato," iii, p. 285, and notes. 



290 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

namely, that "not only the oldest Grecian poets, Homer, 
Hesiod, Orpheus, etc., but also the most celebrated thinkers, 
especially Plato, had acquired all their wisdom from a very 
old translation of the Pentateuch." Neither of these mod- 
ern critics appears to have accepted the assertion of Aristo- 
bulus, and its intrinsic improbability is very great. Cer- 
tainly the internal evidence of the "Timaeus^' negatives 
the assumption that Plato had seen the Pentateuch, for his 
Demiurgus is not the God of Moses, although it was very 
natural for the Alexandrian Jews to think they recognized a 
resemblance. Mr. Grote, moreover, seems to put this mat- 
ter beyond doubt, for he says that the Platonic "Timaeus" 
iecame the medium of transition from the polytheism of 
early Greece to the monotheism of the Christian era. This 
implies very clearly that Mr. Grote did not consider the 
Demiurgus of Plato to be either derived from the polythe- 
ism of the early Grecian ages, on the one hand, or from 
the Mosaic Jehovah, on the other hand, but that he con- 
sidered it a conception which stood between them. The 
point of resemblance is in the idea of a divine and supreme 
personal actor in the production of phenomena. 

It does not seem, therefore, that a philosopher at the 
present day is confined to the source of the primitive relig- 
ion, be that source what it may. The primitive religion, 
whether its origin was fetichism or a belief in ghosts, has 
imposed no shackles upon our minds. The beliefs of the 
primitive men may have originated as Mr. Spencer sup- 
poses, but the question for us — revelation being laid aside — 
is just what it was for Plato, the difference being that our 
means of investigation are superior to his. The grounds 
of our belief in a personal God are not the same as those 
on which the uncivilized races formed first the idea of a 
wandering double emanating from the human body, then 
conceived of spirits or ghosts, next of different orders of 
spirits or ghosts, and finally of a chief and supreme spirit. 



THE VALUES OF SCIENCE. 291 

Our materials for sound deduction are not the same as 
those of the primitive races of mankind, or of the uncivil- 
ized tribes of the present day. I have before remarked 
that the intellectual effort of a savage in striving for the 
idea of a deity is the same kind of effort as that of the 
civilized and educated man ; but that the difference be- 
tween them is in the growth and activity of the reasoning 
power, and in the materials on which it is exercised. While 
our barbarian predecessors lived in an age of ignorance, we 
live in an age of knowledge. We are surrounded by ex- 
traordinary discoveries, and are possessed of the means of 
still further research. They had almost no means for in- 
vestigating physical phenomena. We are, or ought to be, 
disciplined reasoners. They, on the contrary, while able 
to reason correctly on a very few subjects, could not reason 
correctly on all subjects. We are, or ought to be, capable 
of subjecting the materials which the phenomena of nature 
spread before us, to sound processes of thought and to 
logical deductions. We are, or ought to be, capable of dis- 
criminating between that which is really inscrutable and 
that which is not so. We are, or ought to be, able to know 
when we are within the bounds of possible thought, and 
when we transcend them. We are, or ought to be, able to 
see that the existence of phenomena necessarily implies a 
causing power ; that when the phenomena are such as we 
know that man produces, the idea of an intelligent per- 
sonal actor is both a legitimate deduction and a perfectly 
appreciable subject of thought. Are we not entitled to 
apply the same reasoning to the phenomena of nature which 
we know that man did not produce ? And when we so 
reason, do we borrow anything whatever from the primitive 
idea of ghosts or spirits, whether they are supposed to have 
first emanated from human bodies, or to reside in inanimate 
objects ? 

There are two distinct values to be assigned to the re- 
U 



292 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

searches of science. One of them consists in the practical 
improvement of the material condition of society ; the less- 
ening of physical evil, the increase of physical good ; the 
advancement of our power over matter. In an age intense- 
ly devoted to this materialistic improvement, there will be 
a great accumulation of physical knowledge. At the same 
time there are accumulating in the same ratio new mate- 
rials for philosophical speculation concerning the causes of 
the phenomena that are investigated. The specialists who 
carry on the investigations may not always be the best 
reasoners in the application of the new materials to the 
purpose of philosophical inquiry into the producing causes 
of the phenomena. But the other distinct value of their 
investigations consists in the accumulation of materials 
from which the philosopher can deduce the existence of an 
actor in the production of the phenomena. When, from 
these materials, constantly accumulating and constantly to 
be used in a uniform process of reasoning to which the 
human mind is both able and obliged to resort, the philos- 
opher deduces the conception of a supreme, personal, in- 
telligent being, he assigns to that being just those attributes 
which the phenomena of nature compel him to believe in, 
because if the attributes did not exist the phenomena of 
nature could not have become what they are. There can 
be no reason to suppose that as the materials increase, as 
the researches of science, for whatever purpose carried on, 
lead to greater and still greater accumulations of knowl- 
edge, the law of thought by which we deduce the idea of 
an actor in the production of phenomena will change, or 
that the logical necessity for conceiving, or the intellectual 
capacity to conceive of, the attributes of that actor will 
either diminish or fade away. An Omnipotent Power 
without attributes, or one to which no attributes can be 
assigned, is not likely to be the end of all philosophical 
speculation about the ultimate cause. Power without at- 



ANTHROPOMOKPHISM. 293 

tributes, power without a determining will, power without 
guidance, or purposes, or objects, is not a conception to 
which a well-trained intellect is now likely to attain ; and 
the greater the accumulation of physical knowledge be- 
comes, the greater will be the necessity to such an intellect 
for recognizing attributes, and for assigning them to the 
power which is manifested by the phenomena. 

According to Mr. Spencer, the process by which man- 
kind are ultimately to lose the consciousness of a personal 
Deity is the following : Anthropomorphic attributes were at 
first ascribed to the single great supernatural agent of 
whom the primitive men conceived. But in our days, the 
idea of such a supreme supernatural agent has come to re- 
tain but a few of these attributes. These few will event- 
ually be lost, and there will be nothing left but a conscious- 
ness of an Omnipotent Power to which no attributes can 
be ascribed. The probability of this result depends upon 
the necessity for ascribing what are called anthropomorphic 
attributes to the Supreme Being ; or, in other words, it de- 
pends upon the inquiry whether, in order to ascribe to the 
Supreme Being any attributes at all, we are necessarily 
confined to those which are anthropomorphic. 

"Anthropomorphism," a term compounded from the 
Greek avOpw-n-os, man, and fiop<firj, form, has come to sig- 
nify the representation of the Deity under a human form, 
or with human attributes and affections. It is therefore 
important to know what we in fact do, when reasoning on 
the phenomena of nature, we reach the conclusion that 
they must have had an author or producer, and then ascribe 
to him certain attributes. The fact that the ancient relig- 
ious beliefs ascribed to the Supreme Being grossly anthro- 
pomorphic attributes, is unimportant. So is the fact that 
the anthropomorphic attributes have been slowly diminish- 
ing in the conceptions of the reasoning and cultivated part 
of mankind. The really important question is whether 



294 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

there can be no conception of a Supreme Being without 
ascribing to him attributes which liken him to man ; or 
whether, when the anthropomorphic attributes are lost, 
the idea of a personal God will be lost. 

The essential character of any anthropomorphic or hu- 
man attribute — power for example, or wisdom, or goodness 
— is that it is limited, imperfect, and liable to error. But 
when we conceive of these qualities as existing in absolute 
perfection and boundless capacity, while we retain the idea 
that they are personal qualities, we in fact diyest them of 
their anthropomorphic or human character. It is a contra- 
diction in terms to say that an imperfect human capacity 
is the same attribute as a divine and unlimited capacity. 
The difficulty with the ancient religious beliefs, the 
whole error of anthropomorphism, was that the conceptions 
stopped short of the idea of unlimited power, wisdom, and 
benevolence. The attributes ascribed to the Deity likened 
him to man in form, character, powers, dispositions, pas- 
sions. He was an exaggerated human being, with vastly 
more power, more skill, more wisdom, but still with the 
same kind of power, skill, and wisdom, actuated by like 
motives and governed by like passions. Now the truth is, 
that the difference between a limited and imperfect attri- 
bute of character and one that is boundless — ^power, for ex- 
ample — is more than a difference of degree. It is a differ- 
ence in kind ; for while in both cases we conceive of a per- 
sonal capacity to act and a will to guide the act, in the one 
case we are thinking of that which is inferior, limited, and 
feeble, and in the other case we are thinking of that which 
knows no limitations and is absolutely inexhaustible. It 
is not true, therefore, that there can be no conception of a 
Supreme Being without ascribing to him human attributes. 
When we reason from phenomena to the conclusion that 
they must have had an author — when we reach the convic- 
tion that phenomena must have had a cause, that there 



ATTRIBUTES OF THE CREATOR. 295 

must have been an actor, a process, and a product — we 
have to deal with two classes of phenomena. One is the 
class in which we know, from the observations of our senses 
and our experience, that the author and actor was man. 
It becomes verified to us with irresistible certainty that the 
phenomena of human society were produced by an actor, 
and that that actor was man ; a personal agent with a 
limited and imperfect power. When we turn to the phe- 
nomena of nature which we know that man did not pro- 
duce, we are led by the same irresistible logical sequence of 
thought to the conviction that these phenomena must have 
been caused to exist, for human reason revolts at the idea 
that the phenomena which exist were not caused to exist. 
We come immediately to perceive that the phenomena of 
nature are of such a character that the power which has 
produced them must not only have been superhuman, but 
it must have been absolutely boundless. At the moment 
we depart from the investigation of phenomena which belong 
in the department of human efforts, and come to the phe- 
nomena which belong in the department of nature alone, 
while the necessity for a personal actor continues, the char- 
acter and capacities of the actor become entirely changed. 
We see that the phenomena of nature required for their 
production power without limitation, skill incapable of 
error, benevolence that was inexhaustible. We thus pass 
entirely away from anthropomorphic attributes, to the con- 
ception of attributes that are not human. We may go on 
to divest the idea of a Supreme Being of all the attributes 
that can appropriately be classed as anthropomorphic, and 
there will still remain the conception of a Supreme Being to 
whom we not only may but must ascribe attributes that are 
forced upon our convictions, not because some of them belong 
in an inferior degree to man, but because all of them are of 
such a character that if they did not exist in boundless 
perfection the phenomena of nature could not have existed. 



296 CREATIO>T OR EVOLUTION? 

Among the origins which haye been assigned to relig- 
ious beliefs, there is one remarkable hypothesis which may 
be contrasted with the ghost-theory, and which, so far as 
the beliefs of cultivated men at the present day are con- 
cerned, is about as important as the origin of the belief in 
ghosts, or as fetichism. ^t seems that some of the Greek 
philosophers and historians, entirely regardless of the ghost- 
theory as the origin of beliefs in supernatural beings, con- 
sidered that they were fictions invented by the first law- 
givers, and promulgated by them for useful purposes, j Be- 
lief in the gods was thus imposed by the authority ofihose 
who organized society and dictated what men were to be- 
lieve in order to exercise a useful restraint. Plato himself 
regarded this as the origin of what the communities around 
him believed respecting the attributes and acts of the gods ; 
the matters believed being fictions prescribed by the law- 
givers. In his " Eepublic," in which he sketches the en- 
tire political, social, ethical, and religious constitution of 
an ideal city, assuming it to be planned and put in opera- 
tion by an absolute and unlimited authority, he laid it 
down as essential for the lawgiver to determine what the 
fictions were to be in which his own community were to 
be required to believe. Some fictions there must be ; for 
in the community there would be originally nothing but a 
vague emotional tendency to belief in supernatural beings, 
and this tendency must be availed of by some positive 
mythical inventions which it was for the lawgiver to pro- 
duce and the citizens to accept. Such fictions were the 
accredited stories about the gods and heroes, which formed 
the religious beliefs among Plato's contemporaries, and 
were everywhere embodied in the works of poets, painters, 
and sculptors, and in the religious ceremonies. But the 
ancient fictions were, in Plato's opinion, bad, inasmuch as 
they gave wrong ethical ideas of the characters of the gods. 
They did not rest upon traditionary evidence, or divine 



RELIGIOUS BELIEFS IN PLATO'S KEPUBLIO. 297 

inspiration, being merely pious frauds, constructed by au- 
thority and for an orthodox purpose. But they did not 
fulfill the purpose as well as they should have done. Ac- 
cordingly, Plato directs in his ^^ Eepublic " the coinage of 
a new body of legends, for which he claims no character of 
veracity, but which will be more in harmony with what he 
conceives to be the true characters of the gods, and will 
produce a more salutary ethical effect upon those who are 
to be the efficient rulers of the commonwealth after it is 
founded. As the founder of his ideal city, he claims and 
exercises an exclusive monopoly of coining and circulating 
such fictions, and they are to be absolutely accepted by 
those who are to constitute its rulers, and who are to pro- 
mulgate and teach them to the community, as the phy- 
sician administers wholesome remedies. To prevent the 
circulation of dissenting narratives, he establishes a per- 
emptory censorship. There is thus no question of absolute 
truth or absolute falsehood. That is true which is stamped 
at the mint of the lawgiver, and that is false which he 
interdicts.* 

Nowhere has orthodoxy been rested more distinctly 
upon the basis of absolute human authority — authority act- 
ing upon the highest motives of the public good, for the 
most salutary purposes, but without claiming anything in 
the nature of divine inspiration, or even pretending to any 
other truth than conformity to preconceived ideas of the 
characters of the gods. As evidence of what Plato regarded 
as the origin of the religious beliefs which were held by 
his contemporaries, his '* Republic " is an important testi- 
mony ; for he assigns almost nothing to mankind in gen- 
eral, but an emotional tendency to believe in invisible 
quasi-human agents, of whom they had no definite con- 
ceptions, and at the same time they were entirely ignorant 

* Grote's "Plato," iii, p. 181 et seq. 



298 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

of recorded history, past and present. They needed dis- 
tinct legendary fictions and inyented narratives ; these were 
furnished to them by those who could coin them, and were 
accepted upon the authority of those who promulgated 
them. Those who first embodied the fictions as narratiyes 
were the oldest poets ; in progress of time the authority 
which dictated belief in them came to be the state. Plato 
rejected the fictions of the state, and in his "Republic" 
proposed to substitute fictions of his own. The testimony 
of Plato, therefore, in respect to the origin of religious be- 
liefs in the early ages of Greece is decidedly against the 
ghost-theory, whateyer support may be found for that 
theory in the beliefs of the unciyilized races of our own 
day, or in the beliefs of other nations of antiquity. But 
neither the ghost-theory, as the origin of beliefs in super- 
natural beings, nor the origin of such beliefs in the will 
of the lawgiver, which Plato clearly held in his " Repub- 
lic " to be the foundation of orthodoxy, is any test or meas- 
ure of what philosophy may attain to as a rational con- 
ception at the present day. * 

* The contradictions between Plato's ideas of the origin of beliefs in 
the gods, as given in his various writings, are of course unimportant in 
reference to the present discussion. In the " Timaeus," as Mr. Grote has 
pointed out, Plato " accepts the received genealogy of the gods, upon the 
authority of the sons and early descendants of the gods. These sons must 
have known their own fathers; we ought, therefore, to 'follow the law 
and believe them,' though they spoke without either probable or demon- 
strative proof. • . . That which Plato here enjoins to be believed is the 
genealogy of Hesiod and other poets, though he does not expressly name 
the poets." (Grote, iii, p. 189, note.) In other words, the sons of the gods 
are authoritative witnesses to their genealogy, whose ipsi diximus must be 
believed. On the other hand, in his " Republic " and " Leges," Plato rejects 
the authority of those witnesses, and boldly proclaims that their legends 
are fictions, which must be displaced by better fictions, more consonant to 
a true ethical conception of the characters of the gods. It is the province 
of the lawgiver to supply these better legends, but they are all the while 
fictions, although the multitude do not know that they are so. Mr. Grote 



AN IDEAL PHILOSOPHER. 

I propose, therefore, to imagine a man of mature years, 
without any religious prepossessions whateyer, a perfectly 
independent thinker, furnished with the knowledge that is 
now within the easy reach of human acquisition, capable 
of correct reasoning, and with no bias to any kind of belief. 
It is only necessary to personify in one individual the in- 
tellectual capacity of the cultiyated and educated part of 
mankind, but without the religious ideas instilled into 
them by education, in order to have a yaluable witness to 
the mental processes and results which can be followed and 
attained by a right employment of our faculties. And, the 
better to exhibit the processes and results, I propose to let 
this imaginary person discuss in the form of dialogue, m 
which another imaginary interlocutor shall be a modern 
disciple of the evolution school, whatever topics would be 
likely to come into debate between such persons. 

accounts for these and other discrepancies in the writings of Plato by ex- 
plaining that his different dialogues are not interdependent productions, 
but separate disquisitions. (See his admirable and critical examination of 
the Platonic canon, in Chapters lY, V, YI, of his first volume.) 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

The existence, attributes, and methods of God deducible from the phenom- 
ena of Nature — Origin of the solar system. 

Ik all that has been said in the preceding chapters respect- 
ing the two hypotheses of special creation and evolution, the 
existence and attributes of the Supreme Being have been 
assumed. The question of the existence and attributes of 
God has been reserved for discussion as an independent in- 
quiry ; and this inquiry it is now proposed to make, with- 
out any reference to the teachings of revealed religion, or 
to the traditionary beliefs of mankind. The simple idea of 
God, which I suppose to be capable of being reached as a 
philosophical deduction from the phenomena of the uni- 
verse, embraces the conception of a Supreme Being existing 
from and through all eternity, and possessed of the attri- 
butes of infinite power and goodness, boundless, that is to 
say in faculties, incapable of error, and of supreme benefi- 
cence. While this idea of God corresponds with that which 
has been held from an early period under more or less of the 
influence exerted by teachings which have been accepted 
as inspired, or as authorized by the Deity himself, the ques- 
tion here to be considered is whether the same idea of God 
is a rationally philosophical deduction from the phenom- 
ena of the universe without the aid of revelation. 

In order to conduct this inquiry so as to exclude all in- 
fluence of traditionary beliefs derived from sources believed 
to have been inspired, or from any authority whatever, let 



THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 301 

us suppose a man to have been born into this world in 
the full maturity of average human faculties, as they are 
found in well-disciplined intellects of the present age, but 
without any inculcated ideas on religious subjects. In the 
place of education commencing in infancy and carried on 
to the years of maturity, in the course of which more or 
less of dogmatic theology would have become incorporated 
almost with the texture of the mind, let us suppose that 
the mind of our inquirer is at first a total blank in respect 
to a belief in or conception of such a being as God, but 
that his intellectual powers are so well developed that he 
can reason soundly upon whatever comes within the reach 
of his observation or study. Let us further imagine him 
to be so situated that he can command at will the knowl- 
edge that science, as it now exists, could furnish to him, 
and that he is able to judge impartially any theories with 
which he meets. Such a person would be likely to deal 
rationally and independently with any question that might 
arise in the course of his investigations ; and the funda- 
mental question that would be likely to present itself to his 
mind would be. How came this universe and its countless 
phenomena to exist ? 

Stimulated by an eager curiosity, but careful to make 
his investigations with entire coolness of reasoning, let us 
suppose that our inquirer first turns his attention to the 
phenomena of the solar system, and to what astronomy can 
teach him in regard to its construction. He finds it to 
consist of — 

1. The sun, a great central body giving forth light and 
heat. 

2. A group of four interior planets : Mercury, Venus, the 
Earth, and Mars. 

3. A group of small planets, called asteroids, revolving 
beyond the orbit of Mars, and numbering, according to the 
latest discoveries, about two hundred and twentv. 



302 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

4. A group of four planets beyond the asteroids : Jupi- 
ter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. 

5. The satellites of the planets, of which there are 
twenty now known ; all but three of them belonging to 
the outer planets. 

6. An intermediate number of bodies called comets and 
meteors, which revolve in very eccentric orbits. 

This system of bodies, constituting a mechanism by it- 
self, apart from what are called the fixed stars, is the first 
object in nature to which our inquirer directs his studies. 
Inasmuch as the comets and meteors move in very eccen- 
tric orbits, and are supposed to come into our system from 
the illimitable spaces beyond it, although in the case of the 
comets, or some of them, mathematical calculations ena- 
ble astronomers to predict their return when they have 
passed out of the solar system, and inasmuch as the sun 
and the superior planets may be contemplated as a grand 
piece of mechanism, and as the greatest mechanical object 
in nature of whose construction and movements we have 
some accurate knowledge, we will suppose that our inquirer 
confines his attention to this part of the solar system, with- 
out adverting to the action of the bodies which are not al- 
ways, as these are, within the range of the telescope. 

One of the first things that would strike him would be 
the enormous range in the sizes, distances, and relative 
weights of these different bodies. He would learn, for ex- 
ample, that Neptune is eighty times as far from the sun as 
Mercury, and that Jupiter is several thousand times as 
heavy ; and he would observe that these differences in mag- 
nitude, distance from the sun, and weight of each mass, are 
carried through a range of proportions stupendously great. 
If he followed the best lights of modern astronomy, he 
would learn that what is known, or accepted as known, in 
regard to the operation of any law among these bodies, is 
that they are bound together by the law of universal gravi- 



AN ILLUSTRATION. 303 

tation as a force to whicli all matter would be subjected 
when it should come to exist, in whatever forms it might 
be distributed ;^' secondly, that when the bodies now com- 
posing the solar system should come into existence, the 
system would not owe its proportions to the operation of 
the law of gravitation, but would be the result of a plan so 
shaped as to admit of its being governed by the law of 
gravitation after the system had been made, in such a man- 
ner as to produce regularity and certainty of movement 
and to prevent dislocation and disturbance. What the great 
modern telescopes have enabled astronomers to discover 
tends very strongly to show that the plan of the solar sys- 
tem, in respect to the relative distances, magnitudes, and 
revolutions of the different bodies around the sun, and 
their relations to that central body and to each other, are 
not the result of any antecedent law which gradually 
evolved this particular plan, but that the plan itself was 
primarily designed and executed as one on which the law 
of gravitation could operate uniformly, and so as to pre- 
vent any disturbance in the relations of the different bodies 
to each other.* ^ 

An illustration will help to make the meaning of this 
apparent. Let us suppose a human artificer to project the 
formation of a complex mechanism, in which different 
solid bodies would be made to revolve around a central 
body ; and let us imagine him to be situated outside of the 
earth's attraction, so that its attraction would not disturb 
him. He would then have to consider the law of gravita- 
tion only in reference to its operation among the different 
bodies of his machine ; and he would adjust their relative 
distances, weights, and orbits of revolution around the 



* The reader will understand that I do not assert this to be what as- 
tronomers teach, but I maintain it to be a rational deduction from the facts 
which they furnish to us. 



304 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

central body, so that the law of gravitation, instead of pro- 
ducing dislocation and disturbance, would bind the whole 
together in a fixed system of movement, by counteracting 
the centrifugal tendency of a revolving body to depart 
from its intended orbit, and at the same time relying on 
the effect of the two forces in preventing the revolving 
bodies from falling into the center or from rushing off into 
the endless realms of space. 

This is what may well be supposed to have taken place 
in the formation of the solar system, for it is consistent 
with the law which must have preceded the existence of 
that system. We can not suppose that the law of gravita- 
tion was itself a mere result of the relative distances, mag- 
nitudes, and orbits of the different bodies. This supposi- 
tion would make gravitation not a law, but a phenomenon. 
We do indeed arrive at the existence of the law of gravita- 
tion by observing the actions of the bodies which compose 
the solar system ; in other words, we discover the law that 
holds them together, by observing their actions. But we 
should entirely reverse the proper process of reasoning, if 
we were to conclude that the law of gravitation is a phe- 
nomenon resulting from an arrangement of certain bodies 
according to a certain plan. The discoveries of astronomy, 
on the contrary, should lead us to regard gravitation as a 
universal law, which existed before the existence of the 
bodies which have been subjected to it. This is the only 
way in which our inquirer could reason in regard to the 
formation of the solar system, whether he supposed its 
plan to have been a special creation, or to have been evolved 
out of a nebulous vapor by the operation of the laws of 
motion or any other laws. Reasoning upon the hypothesis 
that the law of gravitation existed before there were any 
bodies for it to operate upon, or, in other words, that it had 
become in some way an ordained or established principle by 
which all bodies would be governed, he would have the 



MORAL AND PHYSICAL LAWS. 305 

means of understanding the adaptation of the solar sys- 
tem to be operated upon by the law which he had dis- 
covered. 

He would next ask himself. How came this law of 
gravitation to exist ? That it must have had an origin, 
must have proceeded from some lawgiver competent to 
make and enforce it, would be a conclusion to which he 
would be irresistibly led, for the very idea of a law implies 
that it is a command proceeding from an authority and 
power capable of ordaining and executing it. When it is 
said that a law is a rule of action ordained by a supreme 
power, which is perhaps the most familiar as it is the most 
exact definition, the idea of a command and of a power to 
enforce it is necessarily implied. This is just as true of a 
physical as it is of a moral law ; of a law that is to govern 
matter as of a law that is to govern moral and accountable 
beings. Both proceed from a supreme authority and 
power, and both are commands. /^There is, however, one 
distinction between a moral law and a law of Nature, which 
relates to the mode in which we arrive at a knowledge of 
the law ; a distinction which our inquirer would learn in 
the course of his investigations. We infer the existence of 
a law of Nature, or a law designed to operate upon matter, 
from the regularity and uniformity of certain physical phe- 
nomena. As the phenomena occur always in the same way 
we infer it to be an ordinance of Nature that they shall oc- 
cur in that way. But the moral phenomena exhibited by 
the actions of men have not this regularity and uniformity. 
They are sometimes in accordance with and sometimes 
grossly variant from any supposed rule of moral action. 
We can not, therefore, deduce a moral law from our obser- 
vation of the actions of the beings whom it was designed 
to govern, but we must discover it from the rules of right 
reason and from such information as has been given to us 
by whatever revelation may have come to us from another 



306 • CKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

source than our own minds. But this distinction between 
the modes of reaching a knowledge of physical and moral 
laws does not apply to the authority from which they have 
proceeded. Both of them being commands, or fixed rules 
of action, both must haye had an enacting authority. We 
learn the one by observing the phenomena of Nature. We 
learn the other from reason and revelation. J 

To return now to the examination of the solar system, 
which our inquirer is supposed to be prosecuting. The 
study, which astronomy and its implements will have en- 
abled him to make, has taught him the existence of the 
law of gravitation, and has led him to the conclusion that 
it must have had an enacting authority. Following out the 
operation of this law, through the stupendous spaces of the 
solar system, he would begin to form conclusions respecting 
the attributes of its author. He would see that the power 
must have been superhuman ; in other words, that it must 
have immeasurably transcended anything that can be im- 
agined of power wielded by a being of less than infinite 
capacities ; for, although the space occupied by the solar 
system, from the central sun out to the orbit of the planet 
Neptune, is a measurable distance, the conception of the 
law of gravitation, and its execution, through such, an 
enormous space and among such a complex system of bodies, 
evince a faculty in the lawgiver that must have been bound- 
less in power and skill. The force of gravitation is found 
to exactly balance the centrifugal tendency of the bodies 
revolving around the sun, so that, when once set in motion 
around that center, they remain in their respective orbits 
and never fall into the sun or into each other. Our learner 
would thus see the nature of the adjustment required to 
produce such a result ; and, even if he endeavored to follow 
out this balancing of forces no farther than to the extreme 
boundary of the solar system, he would see that the being, 
who could conceive and execute such a design on such a 



THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 307 

scale, must have had supreme power and boundless intelli- 
gence. So that, by the study of the solar system, as its 
aiTangements and movements are disclosed by astronomy, 
our inquirer would be naturally led to the conception of a 
lawgiver and artificer of infinite power and wisdom, or- 
daining the law of gravitation to operate against the centrif- 
ugal force, which would otherwise conduct out of its orbit 
a body revolving around a center, and then adjusting the 
relative distances, weights, and revolutions of the different 
bodies, so as to subject them to the operation of the great 
law that is to preserve them in fixed relations to each other. 
If, next, our inquirer should go farther in his investiga- 
tions of the solar system, and endeavor to satisfy himself 
concerning the mode in which the different bodies of this 
system came into existence in their respective positions, the 
history of astronomy would teach him that there has been a 
theory on this subject which fails to account for the exist- 
ence of this system of bodies without the hypothesis of some 
special creation. This theory is what is called the nebular 
hypothesis. It supposes that the solar system was evolved 
out of a mass of fiery vapor, which filled the stellar spaces, 
and which became the bodies now observable by the tele- 
scope, and that they were finally swung into their respective 
places by the operation of the fixed laws of motion. But 
all that astronomers now undertake to say is that this hy- 
pothesis is a probably true account of the origin of the solar 
system, and not that it is an established scientific fact, or 
a fact supported by such proofs as those which show the 
existence of the laws of motion. The history of the nebular 
hypothesis, from the time of its first suggestion to the pres- 
ent day, shows that there are no satisfactory means of ac- 
counting for the method in which the supposed mass of 
fiery vapor became separated, consolidated, and formed 
into different bodies, and those bodies became ranged and 
located in their respective positions. The hypothesis that 



308 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

these results were all produced by fixed laws working upon 
a mass of fiery yapor, is one that has been reasoned out in 
very different ways ; and this diversity of views is such that 
astronomers of the higher order do not undertake to say that 
opinions may not reasonably differ in regard to the princi- 
pal question, namely, the question between the nebular 
hypothesis and the hypothesis of a special act or acts of 
creation. 

Inasmuch, therefore, as scientific astronomy would pre- 
sent to our inquirer nothing but the nebular hypothesis to 
account for the production of the bodies of the solar system 
as they now exist, and as there are admitted difficulties in 
this hypothesis which may not be insurmountable but which 
have not been as yet by any means overcome, it can not be 
said that philosophers are warranted in assuming that all 
the phenomena of the solar system are to be explained by 
this theory. The hypothesis that the phenomena, or some 
part of them, have been produced by a cause operating in 
a different way, that is, by an act or acts of intentional and 
direct or special creation, is not excluded by the discoveries 
of the astronomer. Those discoveries lie in the domain of 
astronomy, and they do not exclude the hypothesis of a 
special creation of the solar system upon the plan on which 
we find it arranged. The latter hypothesis lies in the do- 
main of philosophy. It is to be judged by the inquiry 
whether it is a rational explanation of phenomena, which 
astronomy does not show as an established scientific fact, 
or by proofs that ought to be deemed satisfactory, to have 
been produced by the method suggested by the nebular hy- 
pothesis. 

The philosophic reasoning, which would conduct our 
inquirer to his conclusions, would begin for him with the 
existence of an omnipotent being, by whom the laws of 
matter and motion were established. This conception and 
belief he has attained from having discovered those laws. 



DEBATE mXRODUOED. 309 

which must have had an author. He would soon hear the 
scientist speak of "natural" and "supernatural" methods, 
and he would understand that by the former is meant the 
oi)eration of certain fixed laws, and, by the latter, a mode 
of action in a different way. But he would also and easily 
understand that the power which could establish the laws 
of matter and motion, the operation of which the scientist 
calls the natural method, could equally act in another way, 
which the scientist calls the supernatural, but which, in 
the eye of philosophy, is just as competent to the Infinite 
Power as the method called natural. To state it in differ- 
ent words, but with the same meaning, that which the 
scientist calls the supernatural is to the philosopher just as 
conceivable and just as consistent with the idea of a supreme 
being as the order of what we call Nature ; for Nature is 
the phenomena that are open to our observation, and from 
which we deduce the probable method by which they have 
been brought about. It will never do to say that they could 
not have been produced by a cause operating differently 
from a system of fixed laws so long as we reason from the 
hypothesis of the existence and attributes of a Supreme 
Being. If we reason without that hypothesis, we may per- 
suade ourselves of anything or of nothing. 

This idea of a Supreme Being, possessed of the attri- 
butes of infinite power and wisdom, is one that our inquirer 
would have reached as a rational deduction from the opera- 
tion of a law (gravitation) which must have had an author ; 
from the structure of a mechanism so designed as to be 
governed successfully by that law, and from the execution 
of the law through such enormous spaces that nothing 
short of infinite power and wisdom could have produced 
the result. 

At this stage of his investigations, our inquirer en- 
counters a modern scientist. I shall take the liberty of 
coining convenient names for these two interlocutors : call- 



310 CREATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

ing the one Sophereus, as representing the spirit of unpre- 
judiced research in the formation of beliefs without the 
influence of previous teaching ; and the other Kosmicos, as 
a representative of the dogmatic school of evolution and 
agnosticism. 

Sophereus has imparted to his scientific friend the con- 
clusions which he has thus far reached, concerning the ex- 
istence and attributes of a supreme lawgiver and artificer, 
as deduced from the phenomena of the solar system. The 
discussion between them then proceeds as follows : 

Kosmicos. I do not wish to convince you at present of 
my own views on this subject, but I put before you a diffi- 
culty which you ought to solve, if you can, to your own satis- 
faction, before you proceed farther. You have learned of the 
law of gravitation ; and you have imagined a being who 
has established this and other laws by which matter is to be 
governed. To this being you have imputed certain per- 
sonal attributes, which you call infinite power and bound- 
less wisdom. Observe now that the laws to which you 
assign this origin are of perpetual duration ; they have 
operated without change from the remotest period of their 
existence just as they operate now, and we have no reason 
to doubt that they will continue to operate in the same way 
through the indefinite future. They constitute the order 
of Nature. Now, you suppose a Supreme Being, who has 
established these invariable laws, but has not left them 
anything to do ; has not left to them the production of the 
solar system, but has specially interposed, and in a super- 
natural mode of action has constructed the machine which 
has the sun for its center and the surrounding bodies which 
revolve about it. How can you suppose that the same be- 
ing has acted in different ways? How can you suppose 
that the being who you imagine established the general 
laws of Nature and gave to them a fixed operation through- 
out the universe, so that they never would be suspended or 



PLAN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 311 

interrupted, has gone aside from tliem, and made occasional 
constructions by special interpositions of his power ? Is it 
not a contradiction to suppose that an Almighty Being, who 
must have acted by uniform methods without reference to 
occasions, has acted on certain occasions by special methods 
that were not uniform with his fixed laws ? Does not this 
hypothesis imply that his fixed laws were insufficient for 
the purposes for which he designed them, and that he had 
to resort to other means ? How do you get oyer this diffi- 
culty ? 

SoPHEREUS. What you propound as a difficulty does not 
disturb me. I understand the distinction which you make 
between the natural and the supernatural. I can see in the 
solar system how the law of gravitation and all the other laws 
of motion operate ; but I do not see, nor can you explain, 
how these laws, or the laws of chemical combination or any 
other laws, can have evolved the plan of the solar system 
out of a mass of fiery vapor. I can understand the enact- 
ment and establishment of laws of motion, of chemical com- 
bination, and of the mechanical action of different states of 
matter upon each other, to operate in fixed and invariable 
ways, in certain conditions. But I do not see that there is 
any interruption or displacement of these laws, after they are 
established, when an end that is to be accomplished calls for 
a complex system of new objects among which they are to 
operate. It is manifest that the question is whether the dif- 
ferent bodies of the solar system have been formed and placed 
in their respective positions, according to a special design of 
their relative distances, magnitudes, and orbits, or whether 
these are the results of the operation of fixed laws, without 
any special interposition of a creating power. Astrono- 
mers have not explained how the latter hypothesis is any- 
thing more than a probable conjecture. It remains for me 
to consider whether the hypothesis of a special interposi- 
tion, whereby the plan of the solar system has been made, is 



312 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

attended with the difficulty which you suggest. "We are 
reasoning about a period of the remote past when this 
system of bodies did not exist, but when the general laws 
that were to govern all matter may be supposed to have 
been previously ordained. If we think of the solar system, 
conceived and projected by the Supreme Being, as a com- 
plex mechanism that was to exist in Nature, the occasion 
would be one calling for the exercise of infinite wisdom and 
power. The production of such a mechanism, to answer 
any ends for which it was intended that it should exist, im- 
plies attributes that transcend all our human experience of 
the qualities of power and wisdom. That it was an occa- 
sional exercise of power, in no way implies any irregularity 
or inconsistency of method, if the power was so exercised 
as to leave all the general laws of Nature in full operation, 
so that there would be no clashing between what you call 
the natural and the supernatural. I have first to ascertain 
what was the probably intended scope of the general laws 
which are supposed to have been ordained before the solar 
system came into existence. If it appears to have been 
the purpose of the constructor to have these laws work 
out this system of bodies without any special interposition 
and formative skill directly exercised, I need go no fur- 
ther. But I see no evidence of that purpose. 'No one has 
suggested anything but a theory on this subject, which 
is not supported by any satisfactory proofs. I am left, 
therefore, to the consideration of the question whether an 
act of special interposition, in the formation of a plan obvi- 
ously calling for the exercise of infinite wisdom and power, 
is in any way inconsistent with the establishment of a sys- 
tem of laws which were to operate on these bodies and 
among them after they had come to exist. My conclusion, 
from what I have learned of the solar system, is, that in 
the exercise by the same being of the method which you 
call the natural, and the exercise of the method which you 



GRAVITATION. 313 

call the supernatural, there is no inconsistency ; that each 
of the fixed laws of matter and motion was designed to have 
its own scope ; and that each of them may well consist, 
within its limitations, with occasional exercises of power, 
for the production of objects that were to be operated upon 
by the laws, but of which they were not designed to be the 
producing cause. Thus it seems to me to be a rational 
conclusion that the law of gravitation, the general laws of 
motion, and all the other laws of matter, which preceded 
the existence of the solar system, were not designed to be 
the agents by which the plan of that system would be 
worked out, but that the plan was so formed and executed 
that the bodies composing it would be subject to the opera- 
tion of laws enacted by the Infinite Will for the government 
of all the forms of matter. The question is, whether the 
plan of the solar system is due to the operation of the fixed 
laws, or to a special interposition ; or, to state it in an- 
other way, whether the whole of the phenomena, the plan 
and arrangement of the solar system included, are to be 
referred to the operation of certain fixed laws as the pro- 
ducing agents, or whether some part of the phenomena, 
namely, the mechanism of the system, should be referred to 
the special interposition. I am taught, by the physics on 
which astronomers are now agreed, that gravitation is a 
force by which the particles of matter act on each other ; 
that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every 
other particle with a force varying directly as their masses, 
and inversely as the square of the distance which separates 
them. This I understand to be the formula in which the 
law of universal gravitation is expressed. But, for the pur- 
pose of illustrating what I understand to be the operation 
of this force, I have constructed a diagram, in which two 
bodies are represented as A and B. From each of these 
bodies there radiates in all directions an attracting force, 
which acts. directly upon every other body in the universe, 



314 



CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 



and whicli is represented 
in the diagram by dotted 
lines. In the diagram, 
the bodies A and B are 
first supposed to be one 
thousand miles apart. A 
certain portion of the at- 
tracting rays proceeding 
from A would strike di- 
rectly upon B. All the 
other rays proceeding in 
the same direction from 
A would pass on either 
side of B without strik- 
ing it. If B is removed 
to the distance of two 
thousand miles from A, 
the sum total of the 
attractive force which 
A would exert upon B 
would be diminished by 
the square of the dis- 
tance, because B would 
intercept just one fourth 
of the number of rays 
proceeding from A com- 
pared with the number 
which it intercepts when 
the two bodies are only 
one thousand miles apart ; 
and the rays which B 
does not intercept would 
pass along through the 
ealms of space, until 
they encountered some other body, on which they would 




GRAVITATION. 315 

exert a force that would follow the same law of diminution. 
In the diagram, the two bodies A and B may be single par- 
ticles of matter or collections of particles ; they are repre- 
sented as cubes ; but the law of direct action of the attract- 
ing force and the law of its diminution would be the same 
if the bodies were spheres or oblongs. The power of at- 
traction which bodies exert upon each other resides in 
every individual particle of matter composing the body, 
and the attraction which that body exerts upon another 
body is the sum total of the attractions which proceed from 
all the particles composing the mass and which impinge 
upon that other body. 

In the diagram the two bodies A and B are supposed to 
be of the same mass. If, as in the case of the sun and the 
earth, one of the bodies is of far greater mass than the 
other, then the attraction of the sun for the earth is the 
same as the attraction of the earth for the sun, because the 
action is mutual ; but the sun, being the greater mass, 
tends, by reason of its correspondingly greater inertia, to 
remain comparatively stationary, or, in other words, it has 
a greater resistance to being pulled out of its normal po- 
sition, while the earth, having less inertia, is more easily 
deflected from its straight course in which its momentum 
tends to carry it, and so travels in an orbit around the sun, 
the resisting or centrifugal pull of the earth, due to its in- 
ertia, exactly balancing the inward pull due to the mutual 
attraction. I understand that, besides the law of universal 
gravitation, there are two fundamental laws of motion. By 
one of these laws, if a body be set in motion and be acted 
on by no other than the projectile force, it will move for- 
ward in a straight line and with a uniform velocity for- 
ever. But by another law, if the moving body is acted on 
by another force than that which originally projected it in 
a straight line, it will deviate from that line in the direc- 
tion of that other force and in proportion to it. If A, 
15 



316 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

the earth, liable to be drawn toward B, the sun, by their 
mutual attraction, was originally projected into space, at 
a certain distance from the sun, by a force which would 
carry it on in a straight line, it would be acted on by two 
forces : the projectile force would cause it to move in a 
straight line ; the force of the mutual attraction would 
cause it to deviate from that line in the direction of the 
sun. The result would be that the earth would be carried 
around the sun in a circular or an elliptical orbit. Every 
other planet in the solar system would be under the opera- 
tion of the same compound forces governed by the same 
laws ; and while the sun would exert upon each of them 
its force of attraction, and they would each exert upon the 
others an attractive force that would be diminished by the 
squares of their distances from one another, each of them 
would be deflected from the straight line that would have 
otherwise been the path of its motion, and the result would 
be a perpetual revolution around the body that could exert 
upon each just the amount of attraction requisite to over- 
come the projectile force by which it was first put in motion. 

KoSMicos. You have made an ingenious explanation 
of the law of gravitation, which may or may not be cor- 
rect. But now let me understand what you infer from 
this hypothesis, supposing it to be true. What should 
have prevented the law of gravitation and the laws of 
motion from working out this very system of bodies, by 
operating upon a mass of crude matter lying in the uni- 
verse, supposing it to have been fiery vapor or anything 
else ? 

SoPHEREUS. I have thus far arrived, by the aid of what 
astronomy teaches, at a complex system of physical laws, 
the law of universal gravitation, and the laws of motion. 
I must suppose that these laws had an intelligent author. 
I must suppose that they were enacted, in the same sense 
in which we speak of any rule of action ordained by a 



THE ULTIMATE CAUSE. 317 

power competent to conceive of it and to put it into execu- 
tion. To me, as I view the facts of the solar system, the 
idea that the law of gravitation and the laws of motion are 
to be regarded as mere phenomena of matter, or as quali- 
ties of matter according to which, from some inherent 
condition, it must act, does not explain the solar system. 
I can not explain to myself what I see, without asking 
myself how these qualities of matter came to exist. How 
came it to be a condition of all matter that its particles 
should attract each other by a certain force according to a 
certain rule ? How came it to be a law of motion that 
bodies projected into space should continue to move on 
forever in a straight Hne, unless deviated from that line by 
some other force ? /To say that things happen, but that 
no power ever commanded them to happen ; that things 
occur because they do occur, and not 'because some power 
has ordained that they shall occur, is to me an inconceiv- 
able kind of reasoning, if it be reasoning at all./ Because 
men act or profess to act upon certain principles of moral 
conduct, I can not suppose that justice, and truth, and 
mercy are mere phenomena of human conduct, that they 
never had any origin as moral laws in the will of a law- 
giver. For the same reason I can not suppose that the 
physical laws of matter, stupendous in their scope, and of 
unerring certainty in their operation, did not proceed from 
an enacting authority. In short, it seems to me that the 
conception of power, as something independent of the 
qualities of substance, is a logical necessity. 

KosMicos. I am not now trying to persuade you that 
the law of gravitation and the laws of motion did not have 
an intelligent author. For the purposes of the argument, 
I will concede that they were enacted, as you term it. You 
have explained your understanding of the operation of these 
laws as they are expressed in the formula given by astrono- 
mers, and for the present I will assume that they operate 



318 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

in some such way. I will also concede that the idea of 
power in the abstract, as something independent of the 
qualities of substance, is necessary to the explanation of all 
physical phenomena. But I now recall your attention to 
the point which I originally suggested. Explain to me 
how it has happened that the being who you suppose estab- 
lished certain laws for the goyernment of all matter has 
not allowed those laws to eyolve out of diffused matter cer- 
tain bodies which we find grouped together in the uniyerse, 
but has specially interposed by another act, and constructed 
this system of bodies without the agency of his own laws. 
All that we know about the law of grayitation and the laws 
of motion we deriye from observing the actions of these 
bodies which compose the solar system. We infer the ex- 
istence of these laws from the actions of these bodies. Now 
tell me how you suppose that the same being who ordained 
these laws as fixed conditions to which matter was to be 
subjected, and made them to operate upon all matter, 
whether in a crude and unformed state or after it had be- 
come organized into bodies of definite shapes and dimen- 
sions, did not rely upon these inherent conditions of matter 
to produce those shapes and dimensions, but went to work 
by special interposition, and produced the mechanism of 
the solar system as a human artificer would make a machine 
of a corresponding character. 

SoPHEREUS. We must take things in a certain order. I 
understand you to concede, for the present, that the laws 
of grayitation and motion must, or may, haye existed before 
the sun and the planets were formed. . We are agreed, then, 
that power has an existence anterior to and separate from 
the qualities of substance. What, then, is the difiiculty at- 
tending the hypothesis that the Infinite Power, which de- 
yised and established the laws of grayitation and motion 
before the bodies of the solar system were formed, so fash- 
ioned and distributed those bodies that while each of them 



PLAN OF THE SOLAK SYSTEM. 319 

shall exert upon every other a certain amount of direct at- 
traction, that attraction shall diminish in a certain fixed 
ratio, as the distance between them increases ? We can not 
suppose that the relative magnitudes, weights, and dis- 
tances of these bodies were accidental, or that they resulted 
from the property of attraction that was given to the parti- 
cles of matter of which they are composed. That property 
of mutual attraction became at some time a fixed condition 
of all matter, but it will not account for the formation of a 
system of bodies so adjusted that the attracting force will 
act among them by a specific law, by the operation of which 
they will be prevented from exerting on each other an ex- 
cessive amount of such force, or any amount but that which 
is exactly needful to preserve their relative distances from 
each other. Let it be supposed that the property of at- 
traction was impressed upon all the particles of matter in 
the universe, and then that the Infinite Power, abstaining 
from all farther action, and without forming and arranging 
the bodies of the solar system upon any intentional plan, 
left all that plan to be worked out by that property of mat- 
ter ; what reason have we to conclude that the law of grav- 
itation would, as the sole efficient cause, have produced just 
exactly this complex piece of mechanism, so wonderfully 
adjusted ? What reason have we to conclude that the prop- 
erty of attraction, although ordained as an inherent quality 
of all matter, would not, if left without any special inter- 
position, have resulted in some very different arrangement 
and disposition of the matter lying in the space now occu- 
pied by the solar system ? 

KosMicos. Give me your idea of the condition which is 
called "chaos," and I will then explain to you why it is 
that you do not do justice to the scientific distinction be- 
tween the natural and the supernatural method by which 
things have been produced as we see them. 

SoPHEEEUS. I presume you do not mean to ask how I 



320 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

suppose chaotic matter came to exist. Its origin is one 
thing — its condition is another. In regard to its condition, 
it seems very plain that there was a period when diffused 
matter had not receiyed the impress of the qualities or been 
subjected to the laws which we now recognize. Take the 
Mosaic hypothesis, where it speaks of the earth, for exam- 
ple, as "without form and void." In this terse expression, 
there is embraced the idea of a condition of matter without 
qualities, properties, or laws ; lying in an utterly crude 
state, waiting to receive the impress of the divine will. 
The laws of motion have not begun to operate upon it ; the 
laws of chemical combination have not been applied to it. 
It is a rational conclusion that this was the condition of 
things in that remote period of eternity before the solar sys- 
tem was formed. Chaos, then, was the condition of prime- 
val matter before it had received the fixed properties that 
were afterward to belong to it, and before the laws that 
were ever afterward to govern it had been ordained. Lying 
in this utterly crude state, without tendencies, without 
combinations, without definite motion, floating in the uni- 
verse without fixed form or qualities, it awaits the action 
of the Infinite Power. It pleases that power, out of its il- 
limitable resources, to bestow upon this chaotic matter cer- 
tain properties, and to subject it to certain laws. One of 
these properties is that its particles shall attract one another 
by a certain force ; one of these laws is that this force shall 
operate by an invariable and fixed rule of direct action, and 
by an invariable and fixed rule of diminution, according to 
the distance of the particles from each other ; and another 
law is that a body projected into space, by any force^ 
shall continue to move in a straight line until and unless 
it is deflected from that line by some other force. There 
are, too, chemical properties belonging to matter as we 
know it, by which it takes on certain combinations and 
undergoes modifications and arrangements of its particles. 



PLAN IS CREATION. 321 

All these properties, qualities, and laws — these unavoidable 
methods of action — must have been imposed upon the cha- 
otic matter at some time by a power competent to establish 
them, and to put them in operation. But the laws and 
the methods of their operation do not account for the plaj^" 
on which the solar system has been formed, consisting of 
different bodies of such shapes, dimensions, and relative 
distances, that the laws, when applied to them, will pro- 
duce the wonderfully exact and perpetual movements which 
the telescope reveals. That PLAi^ is a creation, for which 
we must look to something more than the laws and proper- 
ties of matter ; and we can only find it in the will and pur- 
poses of the infinite artificer who devised the laws by which 
this mechanism was to be governed after it had been made, 
and who has so made it that it would be governed by them. 

KosMicos. I do not see that you have yet reached a 
stronger ground on which to rest the hypothesis of special 
interposition than that on which is based the hypothesis 
which imputes the formation of the solar system to certain 
fixed laws operating upon crude matter not yet formed into 
definite shapes or placed in certain relative positions. You 
will have to adduce some proof that has a stronger tendency 
to exclude the supposition that the mechanism of the solar 
system was produced by the laws of matter and motion 
working upon some material that lay in the condition which 
you have described as *' chaos." 

SoPHEREUS. Let us, then, look a little farther into some 
of the details of this vast machine. Take one that is most 
obvious, and that lies the nearest to us ; I mean the moon, 
which accompanies our earth as its satellite. The most re- 
markable thing about the motion of the moon is the fact 
that she makes one revolution on her axis in the same time 
that she takes to revolve around the earth, and consequently 
she always presents to us the same face, and her other side 
is never seen by human eyes. How came this to be the 



322 creatio:n^ or evolution? 

case ? How came this to be the adjustment of the two 
motions, the axial revolution of the moon and her reyolu- 
tion around the earth, causing her always to present to us 
the same side ? It is said by astronomers that the two mo- 
tions are so exactly adjusted to each other that the longer 
axis of the moon always points to the earth, without the 
slightest variation. It is conceded, as I understand, to be 
infinitely improbable that this adjustment was the result of 
chance. A cause for it is therefore to be found. Where 
are we to look for that cause, unless we look for it in the 
will and design of the Creator, who established it for some 
special purpose ? 

KosMicos. You are aware that there is a physical ex- 
planation of this phenomenon which accounts for it with- 
out the special design. This explanation is that the moon 
was once in a partially fluid state, and that she rotated on 
her axis in a period different from the present one. In 
such a condition, the attraction of the earth would produce 
great tides in the fluid substance of the moon ; this at- 
traction, combined with the centrifugal force of the moon's 
rotation on her own axis, would cause a friction, and this 
friction would retard the rate of her axial rotation, until it 
became coincident with the rate of her revolution around 
the earth. It is highly improbable that the moon was 
originally set in rotation on her axis with just the same ve- 
locity with which she was made to revolve around the earth. 
This improbability is based on the ellipticity of the moon's 
orbit, which is caused by the attraction of the sun. The 
mean distance of the moon from the earth is 240,300 miles ; 
her smallest possible distance is 221,000 miles ; and the 
greatest possible distance is 259,600. The usual oscillation 
between these extremes is about 13,000 miles on each side 
of the mean distance of 240,300. The diameter of the 
moon is 2,160 miles, or less than two sevenths of the earth's 
diameter. In volume she is about one fiftieth as large as 



THE MOON'S EEVOLUTION". 323 

the earth, but her density, or the specific gravity of her 
material, is supposed to be a little more than half of that 
of our globe ; and her weight is about three and a half times 
the weight of the same bulk of water. When she is nearest 
to the sun, the superior attraction of that body tends to 
draw her out of her circular orbit around the earth ; when 
she is farthest from the sun, this attraction is diminished, 
and thus her terrestrial orbit becomes slightly elliptical. 
But there is another attraction to be taken into account. 
This other attraction, in her former fluid condition, has 
given her the shape, not of a j)erfect sphere, but of an ellip- 
soid, or an elongated body with three unequal axes. The 
shortest of her axes is that around which she rotates ; the 
next longest is that which points in the direction in which 
she is moving ; and the longest of all points toward the 
earth. This shape of the moon, resulting from the earth's 
attraction, has been produced by drawing the matter of the 
moon which is nearest to the earth toward the earth, and 
by the centrifugal force which tends to throw outward the 
matter farthest from the earth. The substance of the 
moon being a liquid, so as to yield freely, she would be 
elongated in the direction of the earth. But if she was 
originally set in motion on her own axis at precisely the 
same rate with which she was made to revolve around the 
earth, the correspondence between the two motions could 
not have been kept up ; her axial rotation would have varied, 
by reason of the fact that her relative distance from the sun 
and the earth varies with the ellipticity of her orbit around 
the earth, and thus the two motions would not correspond. 
But if we allow for the attraction of the earth upon a liquid 
or semi-liquid body, producing for the moon an elongated 
shape, her axial rotation would, if the two motions were in 
the beginning very near together, vary with her revolutions 
around the earth, and the correspondence between the two 
motions would be kept up. Here, then, you have a physi- 



324: CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

cal explanation of the phenomenon which strikes you as 
so remarkable — a result brought about by natural causes, 
without the supposition of what you call intentional design, 
or formative skill directly exercised by a supernatural inter- 
position. 

SoPHEREUS. This is a very plausible theory, but it all 
depends upon two assumptions : First, it assumes it to be 
extremely improbable that the two motions were aborigi- 
nally made to correspond, by an intentional adjustment of 
the moon's weight, dimensions, and shape, upon such a 
plan that the laws of gravitation and movement would keep 
the two motions in exact correspondence. Why should not 
the rates of movement have been originally designed and 
put in execution as we find them ? You anticipate the an- 
swer to this question by another assumption, namely, that 
the substance of the moon was at first in a fluid or semi- 
fluid state, so that she owed her present shape to the effect 
of the earth's attraction, and the centrifugal tendency of 
its most distant part to be thrown out of the line of its mo- 
tion. I should be glad to have you explain why it is ex- 
tremely improbable that the Creator planned this part of 
the solar system, the earth and its satellite, and so adjusted 
the dimensions, shapes, and weights of each of them, and 
fixed the rates of revolution of the satellite, that the laws 
of attraction and motion would find a mechanism which 
they would keep perpetually in operation, and thus preserve 
a constant relation between the moon's axial rotation and 
her revolution around the earth. I have thus far learned 
to regard the probable methods of the Creator somewhat 
differently from those which you scientists ascribe to him. 
Most of you, I observe, have a strong tendency to regard 
the Deity as having no specific plan in the production of 
anything, which plan he directly executed ; and, so far as 
you regard a First Cause as the producing cause of phe- 
nomena, you limit its activity to the establishment of certain 



INTENTIONAL ADJUSTMENT. 325 

fixed laws, and explain all phenomena upon the hypothesis 
that the Supreme Being — if you admit one — made no special 
interpositions of his will and power in any direction, after he 
had established his system of general laws. But to me it 
seems that the weight of probability is entirely against your 
hypothesis. In this particular case of which we have been 
speaking, that of the moon's revolution, the supposed im- 
probability of an original and intentional adjustment of the 
two motions turns altogether on the argument that if they 
had been so adjusted at the beginning they would not have 
kept on, and this argument is supported by the assumption 
that the moon was at first a mass of fluid. I do not under- 
stand this mode of making facts to support theories ; and 
I wish you would explain to me why, in this particular in- 
stance, the inference of a divine and intentional plan in the 
structure of this part of the solar system is so extremely 
imj)robable. To me it seems so obvious a piece of invented 
mechanism, that I can not avoid the conclusion that it was 
the intentional work of a constructor, any more than I 
could if I were to find a piece of mechanism under circum- 
stances which indicated that it was produced by human 
hands. 

KosMicos. You do not even yet do justice to the sci- 
entific method of reasoning. The deductions of science — 
the conclusions which the scientist draws from the phe- 
nomena of Nature — rest upon the postulate of fixed laws of 
Nature, which never change, and which have not been varied 
by any supernatural interference. We mean by a super- 
natural cause one which is not uniformly in operation, or 
which operates in some way different from the fixed laws 
which we have deduced from the observed order of the phe- 
nomena that we have studied and found to be invariable. 
We adopt this distinction between the natural and the su- 
pernatural because the observable phenomena of Nature do 
not furnish any means of discovering as a fact the operation 



826 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

of anything but the fixed laws, or any cause which has 
acted in a different way. Let us now apply this to the 
phenomena which we have been considering — the compo- 
sition and arrangement of the solar system. What do we 
find ? We find a system of bodies in the movements of 
which we detect certain fixed laws operating invariably in 
the same way. When the question is asked, How were these 
bodies produced ? we have no means of reaching a conclu- 
sion except by reasoning upon the operation of the forces 
which these laws disclose, working on the primordial mat- 
ter out of which the bodies became formed. It is for this 
reason that, in accounting for their existence, we speak of 
the method of their formation as the natural, in contra- 
distinction to some other method which we call the super- 
natural ; by which latter term we mean some mode in which 
there has been a power exerted differently from the estab- 
lished and fixed agency of the laws of matter, which con- 
stitute all that we have ever discovered. The nebular hy- 
pothesis affords a good illustration of the distinction which 
I am endeavoring to show you, whether it is well established 
or not, or is ever likely to be. It supposes that there was 
a mass of fiery vapor, floating in the space now occupied 
by the solar system. Tinder the operation of the laws of 
gravitation and motion, of mechanical forces and chemical 
combination, this crude matter becomes consolidated and 
formed into the different bodies known to us as the sun and 
the planets, and the laws which thus formed them continue 
to operate to keep them in the fixed relations to each other 
which resulted from the process of their formation. Whether 
as a matter of fact the solar system was formed in this way, 
this, or some other mode of operation through the action of 
certain established laws operating upon primeval matter, is 
what we call the natural method, in opposition to the super- 
natural ; and we can not discover the supernatural method, 
because the closest and most extensive investigations never 



THE PROBABLE TRUTH. 327 

enable us to find in nature any method of operation but 
that which acts in a fixed and inyariable way. 

SoPHEREUs. What you haye now said brings me to a 
question that I have all along desired to ask you : How do 
you know that the Infinite Power never acts, or never has 
acted, in any way different from the established order of 
Nature ? Is science able to determine this ? If it is not, it 
must be for philoso^Dhy to consider whether there can have 
been, or probably has been, in operation at any time any 
cause other than those fixed laws of Nature which the sci- 
entist is able to deduce from observable phenomena. Be- 
cause science can only discover certain fixed laws as the 
forces governing the bodies which compose the solar system, 
or governing the materials of which they are supposed to 
be made, it does not seem to me that a philosopher is pre- 
cluded from deducing, by a proper method of reasoning 
upon a study of the solar system, the probable truth that 
its mechanism was specially planned and executed by a 
special act of the creating power. The degree to which 
this probability rises — whether it rises higher in the scale 
than any other hypothesis — must depend upon the inquiry 
whether any other hypothesis will better account for the 
existence of this great object, with its enormous mechanism, 
its adjustments, and its unerring movements. I must say, 
from what I have learned of this planetary system, with the 
sun as its center, viewed as a mechanism, that I can con- 
ceive of no hypothesis concerning its origin and formation 
which compares in probability with the hypothesis that it 
was directly and specially created, as we know it, by the 
Infinite Artificer. 

KosMicos. Pray, tell me what you mean by an act of 
creation ? Did you or any other man ever see one ? Can 
you tell what creation is ? 

SoPHEREUS. I think that your question can be answered. 
Creation is the act of giving existence to something that 



328 CREATION OR EVOLUTION"? 

did not previonsly exist. We see such acts performed by 
men, very frequently, so that we do not hesitate to speak 
of the product as a created thing. We do not see acts of 
creation performed by the Infinite Power, but it is surely 
not unphilosophical to suppose that what can be and is 
done by finite human faculties, can be and has been done 
by the infinite faculties of the Deity, and done upon a scale 
and in a perfection that transcend every thing that human 
power has produced. The sense in which I have been led 
to conceive of the solar system as a creation is the same as 
that by which I represent to myself the production, by hu- 
man power and skill, of some physical object which never 
existed before, such as a machine, a statue, a picture, a pyra- 
mid, or an obelisk ; any concrete object which, whether or 
not new of its kind, did not as an individual object pre- 
viously exist. In weighing the probabilities as to the mode 
in which the solar system came to exist, the reasons why 
the idea of its special creation stands by far the highest in 
the scale are these : 1. There must have been a period 
when this great object in nature did not exist, and there- 
fore it must have been caused to exist. 2. The necessary 
hypothesis of a causing power leads inevitably to the con- 
clusion that the power was adequate to the production of a 
system of bodies so proportioned and arranged that they 
would act on each other by certain fixed rules. 3. The 
causing or creating power must have conceived the propor- 
tions and arrangements of the different bodies as a plan, 
and must have executed that plan according to the concep- 
tion. 4. While as a theory we can represent to ourselves 
that the causing power established certain laws of matter 
and motion, which would by their fixed operation on crude 
substances lying in the universe produce this system of 
bodies without any preconceived and predetermined plan, 
without any occasional or special interposition, yet that the 
system, as we find it, is a product of such a nature as to 



REQUIREMENTS OF THE CASE. 329 

haye called for and ' required the special interposition of a 
formatiye will. For, if we proceed upon the hypothesis 
that this enormous and exact mechanism was nothing but 
the product of certain pre-established laws operating on 
crude matter, without direct and special interposition ex- 
erted in the execution of a formed design, we have to ob- 
tain some definite conception, and to find some proof of a 
method by which these laws can have operated to produce 
this system of bodies exactly as we tnow them to be pro- 
portioned and arranged. Astronomical science, and all 
other science, has not discovered, or even suggested, any 
method by which this result could have been brought about, 
without a special act of creation in the execution of an 
original design. On the other hand, the hypothesis of a 
special interposition in the execution of a preconceived 
plan of construction is the most rational, the most in ac- 
cordance with probability, because it best meets the require- 
ments of the case. These requirements were that the pro- 
portions, arrangements, and relations of the different bodies 
composing one grand mechanism, should be such that the 
laws of gravitation and motion would operate upon and 
among them so as to keep them in uniform and unvarying 
movement. 

KosMicos. Very well. You have now come to the 
end of your reasoning. Tell me, then, why it is not just 
as rational a supposition that the Deity conceived of the 
plan of the solar system as a product that would result, 
and that he intended should result, from the operation of 
his fixed laws of matter and motion, and then left it to the 
unerring certainty of their operation to produce the mech- 
anism by the process of gradual evolution ? 

SoPHEREUS. The being who is supposed to hold and 
exercise supreme power over the universe, holds a power 
to execute, by direct and special creation, any design which 
he conceives and proposes to accomplish. I am prepared to 



330 CREATION OR EVOLUTION"? 

concede that tlie process of gradual eyolution can produce 
and apparently has produced some results. But when we 
are looking for the probable methods of the Deity in the 
production of such a mechanism as the solar system, we 
must recognize the superior probability of the direct 
method, because the indirect method which you describe 
as gradual eyolution does not seem adequate to the produc- 
tion of such a system of bodies. If we could obtain facts 
which could have any tendency to show that, without any 
special interposition, the mechanism of the solar system, or 
any part of it, is a mere result of the working of the laws 
of grayitation and motion upon a mass of crude matter, we 
might yield assent to the probability of that occurrence. 
But of course we haye no such facts ; we haye nothing but 
theories ; and therefore there appears nothing to exclude 
the probable truth of a special creation. 

KosMicos. We shall not conyince each other. You 
haye stated your conclusions concerning the solar system 
fairly enough, and I have endeavored to answer them. But 
now let me understand how you propose to apply them to 
other departments of Nature, in which we have means of 
closer investigation. You will find it very difficult, I im- 
agine, to maintain that every organism, every plant, ani- 
mal, fish, insect, or bird, is a special creation, or even that 
man himself is. 

SoPHEHEUS. Let me state for myself just what my con- 
clusions are in regard to the solar system. You will then 
know what the convictions are with which I shall come to 
the study of other departments. I have arrived at the 
conception of an Infinite Being having the power to create 
anything that seems to him good ; and I have experienced 
no difficulty in conceiving what an act of creation is. I 
have also reached the conviction that there is one great 
object in Nature, the existence of which I can not account 
for without the hypothesis of some special act of creation. 



NEWTON'S REASONING. 331 

Whether I shall find this to be the case in regard to every 
other object in Nature, I can not now tell. Perhaps, as 
many of these objects are nearer to us, and more within 
our powers of investigation, the result may be different. 
I shall endeavor to keep my mind open to the necessary 
discriminations which facts may disclose. Possibly I may 
find reason to reverse the conclusions at which I have 
arrived in regard to the solar system, if I find that the 
hypothesis of evolution is fairly sustained by other phe- 
nomena. 

Note. — Newton, whose reasoning powers have certainly not been sur- 
passed by those of any other philosopher, ancient or modern, not only 
deduced the existence of a personal God from the phenomena of Nature, 
but he felt no difficulty in ascribing to the Deity those personal attributes 
which the phenomena of Nature show that he must possess, because with- 
out them " all that diversity of natural things which we find suited to dif- 
ferent times and places " could not have been produced. They could, he 
reasons, " arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily 
existing." Newton does indeed say that all our notions of God are taken 
from the ways of mankind ; but this is by way of allegory and similitude. 
There is a likeness, but not a perfect likeness. There is therefore no 
necessity for ascribing to God anthropomorphic attributes, because the 
enlargement of the faculties and powers to superhuman and boundless 
attributes takes them out of the category of anthropomorphic qualities and 
capacities. In his "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," 
Newton had occasion to treat of the theory of vortices, as a hypothesis by 
which the formation of the solar system is to be explained. The " General 
Scholium," by which he concludes the third book of his " Principia," lays 
down the masterly reasoning by which he maintains that the bodies of the 
solar system, while they persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of 
gravity, could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the 
orbits themselves from those laws. I had written the whole of the pre- 
ceding chapter on the origin of the solar system just as I have printed it, 
before I looked into the " Principia " to see what confirmation might be 
derived from Newton's speculations. I found that while I had not included 
the comets in my examination of the solar system, but had confined myself 
to the bodies that are at all times within the reach of the telescope, the 
same deductions are re-enforced by the comets, eccentric as are the orbits 
through which they range into and out of our system. I quote the entire 



332 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

Scholium, as given in Motte's English translation of the " Principia " from 
the Latin in which Newton wrote, published with a Life by Chittenden, at 
New York, in the year 1848. 

'^GEI^EEAL SCHOLIUM. 

"The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many diffi- 
culties. That every planet by a radius drawn to the sun 
may describe areas proportional to the times of description, 
the periodic times of the several parts of the vortices should 
observe the duplicate proportion of their distances from 
the sun ; but that the periodic times of the planets may 
obtain the sesquiplicate proportion of their distances from 
the sun, the periodic times of the parts of the vortex ought 
to be in the sesquiplicate proportion of their distances. 
That the smaller vortices may maintain their lesser revo- 
lutions about Saturn, Jupiter, and other planets, and 
swim quietly and undisturbed in the greater vortex of the 
sun, the periodic times of the parts of the sun's vortex 
should be equal ; but the rotation of the sun and planets 
about their axes, which ought to correspond with the mo- 
tions of their vortices, recede far from all these proportions. 
The motions of the comets are exceedingly regular, are 
governed by the same laws with the motions of the planets, 
and can by no means be accounted for by the hypothesis 
of vortices ; for comets are carried with very eccentric 
motions through all parts of the heavens indifferently, 
with a freedom that is incompatible with the notion of a 
vortex. Bodies projected in our air suffer no resistance 
but from the air. Withdraw the air, as is done in Mr. 
Boyle's vacuum, and the resistance ceases ; for in this void 
a bit of fine down and a piece of solid gold descend with 
equal velocity. And the parity of reason must take place 
in the celestial spaces above the earth's atmosphere ; in 
which spaces, where there is no air to resist their motions. 



NEWTON'S GENERAL SCHOLIUM. 333 

all bodies will move with tlie greatest freedom ; and the 
planets and comets will constantly pursue their revolutions 
in orbits given in kind and position, according to the laws 
above explained ; but though these bodies may, indeed, 
persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet 
they could by no means have at first derived the regular 
position of the orbits themselves from those laws. 

'' The six primary planets are revolved about the sun in 
circles concentric with the sun, and with motions directed 
toward the same parts, and almost in the same plane. Ten 
moons are revolved about the earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, in 
circles concentric with them, with the same direction of 
motion, and nearly in the planes of the orbits of those 
j)lanets ; but it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical 
causes could give birth to so many regular motions, since 
the comets range over all parts of the heavens in very ec- 
centric orbits ; for by that kind of motion they pass easily 
through the orbits of the planets, and with great rapidity ; 
and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and 
are detained the longest, they recede to the greatest dis- 
tances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturb- 
ance from their mutual attractions./ This most beautiful 
system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed 
from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and power- 
ful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centers of other 
like systems, these being formed by the like wise counsel, 
must be all subject to the dominion of One ; especially 
since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with 
the light of the sun, and from every system light passes 
into all the other systems ; and lest the systems of the fixed 
stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, 
he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from 
another. " j 



CHAPTER IX. 

Does evolution account for the phenomena of society and of nature? — 
Necessity for a conception of a personal actor— Mr. Spencer's proto- 
plasmic origin of all organic life — ^The Mosaic account of creation 
treated as a hypothesis which may be scientifically contrasted with 
evolution. 

A LOKG interval has elapsed since the conference de- 
scribed in the last chapter, between the searcher after wis- 
dom and his scientific friend. At their next interyiew they 
take up the subject of a First Cause where they left it at 
the conclusion of their debate on the solar system. 

KosMicos. Well, Sophereus, what have you been study- 
ing since we last met ? 

SoPHEREUS. Many things. I have been studying what 
is commonly called Nature, and I have been studying so- 
ciety. With regard to society, I have been endeavoring to 
discover to what the phenomena of social life are to be at- 
tributed as their producing cause or causes ; whether they 
can be said to owe their existence to the direct action or 
influence of intelligent wills, or are to be considered as 
effects produced in the course of an ungoverned develop- 
ment, wrought by incidental forces in varying conditions 
of human existence. The latter, I find, is one of the the- 
ories now prevailing. 

KosMicos. And what is your conclusion ? 

SoPHEREUS. My general conclusion in regard to the 
phenomena of human society is the same as that which I 
formed from a study of the phenomena of the solar system. 
I find a great many things which I can not explain without 



SOCIAL PHENOMENA. 335 

the hypothesis of a direct creating power exerted by an in- 
telligent being. I know that you object to the idea of cre- 
ation, but I explained to you in our last discussion that I 
understood it to mean the causing something to exist which 
did not exist before, and the doing it by an intentional and 
direct act of production. 

KosMicos. No matter about your definition. What are 
the facts that you propose to discuss ? 

SoPHEREUS. In the social phenomena I find many acts 
of creation. I do not find that buildings spring out of the 
ground without human intervention, or that machinery is 
formed by the spontaneous arrangement of matter in cer- 
tain forms and relations, or by the tendencies that are im- 
planted in matter as its inherent properties. I find an 
enormous multitude of concrete objects, formed out of dead 
matter, by human intervention, availing itself of those prop- 
erties of matter, which without such active intervention 
would have remained quiescent, and would not have re- 
sulted in the production of these objects. It is a common 
form of expression to speak of the ^^ growth" of cities, but 
no one understands by this form of speech that a city has 
become what it is without the action of numerous individ- 
uals projecting and building their separate structures, or 
without the combined action of the whole body of the in- 
habitants in determining and executing a general plan to 
which individuals are to conform, more or less exactly, their 
particular erections. Again, I find that there are rules of 
social life, which take the form of what are called *'laws," 
and these are imposed by the will of some governing au- 
thority ; they are always the product of some one human 
will, or of the collective will of a greater number of per- 
sons. I have looked into history and have found many in- 
stances of military conquest, invasions of the territory in- 
habited by one race of men by another race, domination of 
different dynasties, overthrow of one governing power, and 



336 CKEATION OR EVOLUTIOIT? 

substitution of another. Although the changes thus pro- 
duced are often very complex, sometimes rapid and some- 
times slow in reaching the consequences, I do not find that 
they have ever taken place without the direct action of,' 
some one human will, or of the aggregate force of many 
human wills. The conquests of Alexander and Napoleon 
are instances of what a single human will can do in chang- 
ing the condition of nations ; and I have not been able to 
read history by the interpretation that makes such men 
mere instruments in the hands of their age, which would, 
without their special existences and characters, have brought 
about the same or something like the same results. The 
invasions of the Roman Empire by the Northern barbarians 
are instances of the pressure of one population upon another, 
not attributable, perhaps, to the will and leadership of any 
one individual, but produced by the united force of a great 
horde of individuals determined to enjoy the plunder which 
a superior civilization spread before them. Then, with re- 
gard to the phenomena of what are called constitutions of 
government, or the political systems of exercising public 
authority, I find numerous cases in which the force of an 
individual will and intelligence has been not only a great 
factor, but by far the largest factor in the production of 
particular institutions. The genius of Csesar, and his ex- 
traordinary constructive faculties, molded the institutions 
of Eome in the most direct manner, and created an imperial 
system that lasted for a thousand years, and that even out 
of its ruins affected all subsequent European civilization. 
In such cases, more than once repeated in modern times, 
the particular circumstances of the age and the co-operation 
of many other individuals have helped on the result, but the 
conception, the plan, the purpose, and the execution, have 
had their origin in some one mind. But for the individual 
character, the ambition, the force, and the mental resources 
of the first Napoleon, can one believe that the first French 



SOCIAL PHEXOMENA. 337 

Empire of modern times would have grown out of the con- 
dition of France ? Suppose that Oliver Cromwell had 
never lived. The protectorate, the system of govern- 
ment which he gave to England, was the most absolute 
product of the will and intellect of one man that the world 
in that kind of product had ever seen ; for, although the 
people of England were ready for and needed that system, 
and although the antecedent and the surrounding circum- 
stances furnished to Cromwell many materials for a political 
structure that was not the old monarchy, and yet had while 
it lasted all the vigor, and more than the vigor, of the old 
monarchy, still, without his personal characteristics, his 
ambition to found a dynasty on the wants of his country, 
and his personal capacity to devise and execute such a sys- 
tem, one can not believe that England would have had 
what he gave her. What he could not give her was a son 
capable of wielding the scepter which he had fashioned. 
Here is this America of yours — a country in which, to a 
certain extent, the political institutions have been influ- 
enced by the circumstances that followed the separation of 
your colonies from the English crown. Undoubtedly, your 
ancestors of the Revolutionary epoch could not construct a 
monarchy for the group of thirteen newly existing States, 
each with its right and enjoyment of an actual autonomy. 
The habits and genius of the people forbade the experiment 
of monarchical or aristocratic institutions ; no materials for 
either existed. But within the range of republican insti- 
tutions there was a choice open, and the peo^^le exercised 
that choice. They made one system of confederated States, 
and found it would not answer. They then deliberately 
assembled their wisest and greatest men. They gave to 
them a commission that was restricted by nothing but the 
practical necessity of framing a government that would 
unite the requirements of power with the requirements of 
liberty. The result was the Constitution of the United 



338 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

States — a system of government that was, within the limi- 
tations of certain i^ractical necessities, both in its funda- 
mental principles and in many of its details, the deliberate 
choice and product of certain leading minds, aided by the 
public consent, to a degree that is almost unparalleled in 
the formation of political institutions. After it had gone 
into operation, it was believed that the requirements of lib- 
erty had not been sufficiently regarded, and it was directly 
and purposely modified by the intervention of the collective 
will of the whole people. And when I turn to the history 
of philosophies, of religions, of the fine arts, or of the me- 
chanical arts, I find everywhere traces of the force of indi- 
vidual genius, of the direct intervention of individual wills, 
and of the power of men to cause new systems of thought 
and action to come into existence, and to create new objects 
of admiration or utility. In regard to languages, I have 
read a good deal about the controversy concerning their 
origin, but I have observed one thing to be very apparent : 
whether the gift of articulate speech was bestowed on man, 
when he had become a distinct being, in a manner and for 
a purpose which would distinguish him from all the other 
animals, or whether it became a developed faculty akin to 
that by which other animals utter vocal sounds intelligible 
to those of their species, it is certain that in man there is 
a power of varying his vocal utterances at pleasure, which 
is possessed by no other creature on this earth. The ex- 
pansion of languages, therefore, the coinage of new words, 
the addition of new inflections, the introduction of new 
shades of meaning, the method of utterance which is called 
pronunciation, and the different dialects of the same tongue, 
are all matters which have been under the control of indi- 
viduals dwelling together, and have all resulted from the 
arbitrary determination of more or less numerous persons, 
followed by the great mass of their nation, their race, or 
their tribe. Even when a new and third language has been 



PERSOmFICATIOiT OF POWER. 339 

formed by tlie contact of two peoples speaking separate 
tongues, we may trace the same arbitrary adoption of parts 
of each separate tongue, in the first beginning of the fusion, 
and the new language consequently exhibits a greater or a 
less predominance of the characteristics of one of its parent 
tongues, according as the one population has compelled the 
other to adopt the greater part of its peculiar modes of 
speech. 

KosMicos. You have gone over a good deal of ground, 
but now what do you infer from all this, supposing that 
you have taken a right view of the facts ? 

SoPHEKEUS. I infer that, as in the social phenomena 
there are products and effects which have owed their ex- 
istence to human will and direct human action, so, in 
other departments, for example, in the domain which is 
called Nature, and which is out of the sphere of human 
agency and human force, it is reasonable to conclude that 
there are products and effects which must have owed their 
existence to a will and a power capable of conceiving and 
producing them. And this is what leads me, as I was led 
in the examination of the solar system, to the idea of a 
Supreme Being, capable of producing those objects in na- 
ture which are so varied, so complex, so marvelously con- 
structed, so nicely adapted to the conditions of each sep- 
arate organism, that if we attribute their existence to any 
intelligent power, it must be to a power of infinite capaci^ 
ties, since nothing short of such capacities eould have con- 
ceived and executed them. 

KosMicos. You have now come to the very point at 
which I have been expecting to see you arrive, and at 
which I will put to you this question : Why do you per- 
sonify the power to which you trace these products in the 
natural world ? Substitute for the term God, or the Cre- 
ator, the power of Nature. You then have a force that is 
not only immense, but is in truth without any limit — a 



340 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

force that embraces everything, gives life to everything, is 
at once cause and effect, is incessantly active and inex- 
haustible. It commands all methods, accomplishes all ob- 
jects, and uses time, space, and matter as its means. Why 
do you personify this all-pervading and sufficient power of 
Nature ? Why make it a being, a deity, when all you 
know is that it is a power ? "Where wast thou when I 
laid the foundations of the world ?" is a question that God 
is supposed to have asked of Job ; and it simply shows that 
Job had been traditionally taught to believe that there is 
such a being as God, and that that being laid the founda- 
tions of the world. Substitute Nature in the question, let 
Nature ask the question, and it is just as pertinent, and in- 
volves the same problem of human existence. Where was 
man when Nature began to exhibit that power which has 
evolved all things that we see out of the primeval nothing- 
ness ? 

SoPHEKEUS. Well, here I must say that you have left 
out certain ideas that are essential to all true reasoning on 
this subject. Power without a guide, power without con- 
trol, power without a determining will, power that acts 
without a volition which determines the how and the when, 
is a thing that I can not conceive. I thought that in our 
former conversation, when we were considering the solar 
system, you conceded that power, as something abstracted 
from substance or its properties, was a logically necessary 
conception. 

KosMicos. I did. But I did not concede that power 
must be converted into a person. You must not misun- 
derstand me. It certainly is my idea that power is a thing 
to be contemplated by itself ; and we are surrounded every- 
where by its manifestations. But it is not my idea that it 
is held and exercised by the being called God, or by any 
being. We only know of it by its effects ; and these show 
that Nature is, after all, both cause and effect, manner and 



POWER AND WILL INSEPARABLE. 341 

execution, design and product. You can go no farther. 
You can not go behind Nature and find a being who sat 
in the heayens and laid the foundations of the world, un- 
less you mean to accept a story which wise men have at 
last abandoned along with many kindred beliefs which 
came from the ages of the greatest ignorance. 

SoPHEREUS. Pardon me : the question that was put to 
Job has more than one aspect. But I have considered the 
narrative that is found in the first chapter of Genesis only 
as a hyi)o thesis to be weighed with other hypotheses of the 
origin of the world and its inhabitants. I have studied the 
phenomena to which you give the name of Nature, and I 
will tell you what seems to me to be a postulate necessary 
to be carried into that study. I have observed that in the 
works of man two things are apparent : One is, that power 
is exercised ; the other is, that the exercise of the power is 
always accompanied by a determining will, which decides 
that the power shall be exerted, or that it shall be deferred, 
or that it shall be applied variously as respects the mode 
and the time. In human hands, power is not illimitable, 
but within certain limitations it may be exercised, and it is 
always under the guidance of a will. A man determines to 
build a house ; he decides on its dimensions, and when he 
will begin to erect it. A general determines to attack the 
enemy on a certain day, and he marshals his forces accord- 
ingly. A people determine to change their government, 
and they decide what their new government shall be. An 
artist determines to paint a certain picture, and he paints 
it. Whenever we see human power exercised, so that we 
can connect product and power, the power itself is put in 
motion by an intelligent will. I say, therefore, that the 
idea of power without a controlling will, without a deter- 
mining design, is inconceivable : for I am obliged to draw my 
conclusions from what I observe, and certainly the phenom- 
ena of society do not present any instances of a product re- 



34:2 CREATIO]^ OR EVOLUTION? 

suiting from an exercise of power without a determination 
to exercise it. Power diffused, power without guidance, 
power moving by its own volition and without the Tolition 
of any intelligent being, is not exhibited in the works of 
man. 

KosMicos. But we are now dealing with the works of 
Nature ; and the question is, whether the power that is 
manifest in Nature is, to adopt your language, under the 
control or guidance of a being who is something other than 
the power itself. You must remember that this is a do- 
main in which you can see nothing but products and effects. 
You must also remember that if the immensity and variety 
of those products and effects lead to the conclusion that the 
power transcends all human faculty, is superhuman, and, so 
far as we can tell, boundless, all that we can know is that the 
power itself is illimitable. The quality of an infinite and 
illimitable capacity may be imputed to the power of Nature, 
because a power without limit seems necessary to the pro- 
duction of such effects as we see. But here we must stop. 
We have no warrant for believing that the power which we 
trace in the phenomena of Nature is held and controlled by 
a person, as man holds and controls the power which he ex- 
ercises with his hands. What we see in Nature is the exer- 
cise of an immense and apparently boundless power. But 
the imputation of that power to a being distinct from the 
power itself, is a mere exercise of the human imagination, 
without any proof whatever. See how this imagination has 
worked at different periods. Monotheism and polytheism 
are alike in their origin. The one has imputed to different 
beings all the phenomena in the different departments of 
Nature, one being having the charge and superintendence 
of one department and another being having another de- 
partment. Good and evil have thus been parceled out to 
different deities or demons. On the other hand, monothe- 
ism attributes all to some one being, and his existence is no 



POWER IMPLIES AN ACTOR. 343 

more rational than the existence of the whole catalogue of 
the mythologies of all antiquity, or the stupid beliefs of the 
present barbarous tribes. But Nature is a great fact, or 
rather a vast store-house of facts, which we can study ; and 
what we learn from it is that there is a power which Nature 
is constantly exerting, which is without any assignable limit, 
which is itself both cause and effect, and beyond this we 
can not go. 

SoPHEREUS. Let us see if you are correct. In the first 
place, do you not observe that the tendency of mankind to 
personify the powers of Nature is one of the strongest proofs 
of the logical necessity for an interpretation which seeks 
for an intelligent being of some kind as the actor in the 
production of the phenomena ? It is the fashion, I find, 
among a certain class of philosophers, to impute this pro- 
pensity to the proneness of the human mind toward super- 
stitious beliefs ; to the mere effect of poetical or imaginary 
temperament in certain races of men, or to fear in other 
races ; or to a vague longing for some superior being who 
can sympathize with human sorrows or assist human efforts. 
Something of all these influences has, no doubt, in different 
degrees and in various ways, worked itself into the religious 
beliefs of mankind. But neither any one of them, nor the 
whole of them, will satisfactorily account for either poly- 
theism or monotheism. We must go deeper. There has 
been an unconscious reasoning at work, more or less un- 
conscious, which has led to the conclusion that power, the 
manifestation of power, necessarily implies that the power 
is held and wielded by some intelligent being. The beliefs 
of mankind, whether embracing one such being or many, 
have not been the mere results of superstition, or fear, or 
longing for divine sympathy, or for superhuman companion- 
ship or protection. Those beliefs owe as much to the reason- 
ing powers of mankind as they do to the influence of im- 
agination. In many ages there have been powerful intel- 



344 CKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

lects, which have been free from the influence of superstition 
or fancy, and which have recognized the logical necessity 
for a conception of power as a force that must be under the 
guidance and control of intellect. While the popular belief 
has not attained this conyiction by the same conscious and 
logically conducted process of reasoning, it has been un- 
consciously led through the same process, by what is open 
to the observation of human faculties, even in the less civ- 
ilized portions of the human race. The savage who is suffi- 
ciently raised above the brute creation to exercise his own 
will and intelligence in the pursuit of his game, or in build- 
ing his wigwam, or in fighting his enemy, knows that he 
exercises a power that is under his own control ; and, as 
soon as he begins to observe the phenomena of Nature, he 
conceives of some being who holds a like power over the 
material universe, and whom he begins to personify, to 
propitiate, and to worship. This is the result of reasoning : 
feeble in some cases, but in all cases the intellectual process 
is the same. I^ow let us see whether this process is a sound 
one. Are you sure that you are correct in saying that the 
power of Nature is without limit ? Is there a single force 
in Nature, a single property of matter, or any sequence of 
natural events, that is not circumscribed ?/rI)o not the 
very regularity and uniformity of the phenomena of Nature 
imply that some authority has said, from the beginning. 
Thus far shalt thou go and no farther ? You surely do not 
imagine that the law of universal gravitation made itself, 
or that it settled itself into an exact and invariable method 
of action by the mere force of habit, beginning without pre- 
scribed and superimposed limits, and finally resulting in a 
fixed rule which never changes. You do not imagine that 
the mysterious, impalpable motion to which is now given the 
name of electricity, created for itself, as a matter of habit, 
the perpetual tendency to seek an equilibration of the quan- 
tity accumulated in one body with the quantity that is con^ 



MAN AND NATURE. 345 

tained in another, by transmission through intermediate 
bodies ; or that it established for itseK the conditions which 
make one substance a better conducting medium than an- 
other. You do not suppose, I take it, that certain particles of 
matter adopted for themselves a capacity to arrange them- 
selves in crystals of certain fixed combinations and shapes, 
and that other particles of matter did not choose to take on 
this habit. All these forces, powers, and tendencies are of 
very great extent, much beyond any that man can exercise ; 
but they all have their limitations, their prescribed and in- 
variable methods of action ; they all act as if they have been 
commanded to act in a certain way and to a certain extent, 
and not as if they have chosen for themselves both method 
and scope. Now, is it not a rational deduction that what is 
really illimitable is not the power of Nature, but the power 
which made Nature what it is ?/ Is it not a necessary con- 
clusion that, inasmuch as all Nature acts within certain 
limits, stupendous and minute and varied as the products 
or effects may be, there must have been behind Nature a 
power that could and did prescribe the methods, the limi- 
tations, the lines within which Nature was to move and act ? 
fYoiw. can not put into the mouth of Nature the question. 
Where wast thou (Man) when 1 laid the foundations of the 
world ? without suggesting the retort. Where wast thou 
(Nature) when the foundations of the world were laid ? 
And this question Nature can no more answer, for itself, 
than man can answer for himself when the question is put 
to him. Each must answer, I was nowhere — I did not exist. 
Each must answer. There was a power which called me into 
being, which prescribed the conditions of my existence, 
which gave me the capacities that I possess, which ordained 
the limitations within which I was to act. / 

KosMicos. And all this you derive from the fact that a 
being whom we call Man has some power over matter ; that 
he has an intelligent faculty by which he can do certain 



346 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

things with matter, and that he actually does produce cer- 
tain concrete forms of new things that he did not find made 
to his hand. Is this the basis of your reasoning about the 
origin of Nature ? 

SOPHEEEUS. It is, and I will tell you why. Man is the 
one being on this earth in whom we find an intelligent will 
and constructive faculty united, to a degree which shows 
a power of variation and execution superior to that of all 
other beings of whose actions we have the direct evidence 
of our senses. We might select one or more of the inferior 
animals, and find in them a strong constructive faculty; 
but we do not find it accompanied by a power of variation 
and adaptation that is equal to that of man in degree, or 
that is probably the same in kind. I will not insist on the 
distinction between reason and instinct, but I presume you 
will admit that, when we compare the constructive faculty 
of man and that of the most ingenious and wonderfully 
endowed animal or insect, the latter acts always under an 
implanted impulse, which we have no good ground for re- 
garding as of the same nature as man's reasoning power, 
however striking may be the products. When, therefore, 
we select the human power of construction or creation as 
the basis of reasoning upon the works of Nature, we resort 
to a being in whom that power is the highest of which we 
have direct evidence. In the works of man we have direct 
and palpable proof that the phenomena — the products of 
human skill and human force — are brought about by the 
faculties of an intelligent and reasoning being. If we dig 
into the earth and find there a statue, an implement, or a 
weapon, we do not hesitate to conclude that the spot was 
once inhabited by men, just as surely as we should conclude 
the same thing if we found there human bones. The world, 
above-ground and below-ground, is full of concrete objects 
that we know must have been fashioned by human skill, 
guided by human intelligence. This intelligence, this in- 



MAN AND NATURE. 347 

tellect, is not matter; it is a being; it is a person. It is 
not a force, acting without consciousness ; it is a being 
wielding a force which is under the control of Yolition. 
The force and the yolition are both limited, but within the 
limitations they constitute the power of man. Pass, then, 
to the works of Nature, or to what you call the power of 
Nature. As, in the case of man, you can not conclude that 
he created for himself his own faculties, that he prescribed 
for himself the limitations of his power oyer matter, or that 
he formed those limitations as mere matters of habit, or 
that it was from habit alone that he deriyed his great con- 
structiye powers, so, in studying the works of Nature, you 
must conclude that some intelligent being made the laws 
of matter and motion, prescribed the unyarying order and 
method of action, laid down the limitations, originated 
the properties, and, in so doing, acted by yolition, choice, 
and design. The distinction, as I conceiye, between man 
and Nature is, that there has been bestowed on man, in 
a yery inferior degree, a part of the original power of 
creation. On Nature there has been bestowed none of 
this power. As we find that the existence of man as an 
intelligent being, endowed with certain high faculties, 
among which is a certain degree of the power of creat- 
ing new objects, can not be accounted for without the 
hypothesis of a creator, still less can we account for 
the existence and phenomena of Nature, which has in 
itself no degree of the creating power, without the same 
hypothesis. 

KosMicos. Stop where you are. Why do you separate 
man from Nature ? Haye you yet to learn that man is a 
part of Nature ? I suspect you have, after all, been reading 
the book of Genesis for something more than a hypothe- 
sis, and that you have adopted the notion that God made 
Adam a liying soul. Put away all the nursery-stories, and 
come down to the '^ hard-pan" of actual facts, which show 



34:8 CKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

by an overwhelming array of evidence that man had a very 
different origin. 

SoPHEEEUS. You know, my friend, that I never learned 
any nursery-stories, and therefore I have none to unlearn. 
It may be my misfortune, but I find myself here in the 
world in mature years, studying the phenomena of life, 
without having had any early teaching, but with such 
reasoning as I can apply to what I observe, and to what 
science, history, and philosophy can furnish to me. I be- 
long to no church, to no sect, to no party, and I have not 
even a country. I am a citizen of the world, on my travels 
through it, learning what I can. Now, what are your facts ? 
Let us get down, as you say, upon the "hard-pan," and 
make it as hard as you please. 

KosMicos. First answer my question : Why do you 
separate man from Nature ? 

SoPHEEEUS. I know very well that in a certain sense 
man is a part of Nature. But it is necessary to contemplate 
man apart from all the rest of Nature, because we find that 
he is endowed with intellect, and we have very good and 
direct evidence that his intellect is an actor ; and we know 
that he is endowed with consciousness, and we have very 
good and direct evidence that, by introspection, he becomes 
aware of his own consciousness, and what it is. 

KosMicos. Very well, assume all that if you choose. 
Now let me show you an origin of man, with his intellect 
and consciousness, which will entirely overthrow the idea 
that he was a special creation in the sense to which you 
seem to be drifting, namely, that of miraculous interposi- 
tion by a being called God. You must be aware, as you 
have read so much, that modern science has made great 
discoveries, and that there are certain conclusions on this 
subject which are drawn from very numerous and important 
data. Those data involve the origin of all the different 
animals, man included. They are all to be accounted for 



SPENCER'S ORIGIN OF LIFE. 349 

in the same way and by the same reasoning. Now, if we 
go back to a period when none of them existed, we find a 
method of accounting for them that is infinitely superior 
as a hypothesis to any idea of their special creation as an 
act or as a series of acts of divine and direct interposition. 
I will take this method as it is given by Herbert Spencer, 
because, as he has reasoned it, it accounts for both intellect 
and consciousness ; and Mr. Sioencer is allowed to be one 
of the leading minds of this age. Mark the starting-point 
of his whole philosophy on this subject of organic life. 
Darwin, as you know, supposes some one very low form of 
organic life, an aquatic grub, and out of it he evolves all 
the other animal organisms, by the process of natural and 
sexual selection, through successive generations, ending in 
man. This hypothesis leaves the original organism to be 
accounted for, and, although Darwin does not expressly as- 
sert that it was the Creator who fashioned the first organism, 
he leaves it to be implied. . Spencer, on the other hand, 
explicitly denies the absolute commencement of organic life 
on the globe. Observe that the terms of his theory of evo- 
lution are much more complete than Darwin's, for he says 
that '* the affirmation of universal evolution is in itself a 
negation of an absolute commencement of anything. Con- 
strued in terms of evolution, every kind of being is con- 
ceived as a product of modifications wrought by insensible 
gradations on a pre-existing being ; and this holds as fully 
of the supposed commencement of organic life, or a first 
organism, as of all subsequent developments of organic 
life."* / 

You-Vill see, therefore, that the idea of a Creator, fash- 
ioning a type of animal organism, or making a commence- 
ment of organic life, is excluded by this great philosopher, 
although he does concur in the main in Darwin's general ex- 

* "Biology," i, p. 482. 



350 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

planation of the mode in which one organism is evolved out 
of a pre-existing organism. He goes much farther, because 
his system of universal evolution embraces the elements out 
of which any organic life ^vhatever has been developed, and 
negatives the idea of any absolute commencement of any- 
thing whatever. He begins with the original molecules of 
organizable matter. By modifications induced upon modi- 
fications these become formed, by their inherent tendencies, 
into higher types of organic molecules, as we see in the 
artificial evolution effected by chemists in their laborato- 
ries ; who, although they are unable to form the complex 
combinations directly from their elements, can form them 
indirectly through successive modifications of simpler com- 
binations, by the use of equivalents. In Nature, the more 
complex combinations are formed by modifications directly 
from the elements, and each modification is a change of 
the molecule into equilibrium with its environment, sub- 
jecting it, that is to say, to new conditions. Then, larger 
aggregates, compound molecules, are successively generated; 
more complex or heterogeneous aggregates arise out of one 
another, and there results a geometrically increasing multi- 
tude of these larger and more complex aggregates. So that 
by the action of the successive higher forms on one another, 
joined with the action of the environing conditions, the 
highest forms of organic molecules are reached. Thus in 
the early world, as in the modern laboratory, inferior types 
of organic substances, by their mutual actions under fit 
conditions, evolved the superior types of organic substances, 
and at length ended in organizable protoplasm. Now, let 
me read to you Mr. Spencer's description of the mode in 
which the substance called '* protein" becomes developed 
into organic life. "And it can hardly be doubted," he 
says, " that the shaping of organizable protoplasm, which 
is a substance modifiable in multitudinous ways with ex- 
treme facility, went on after the same manner. As I learn 



THE ORIGINAL CELL. 351 

from one of our first chemists. Prof. Frankland, protein 
is capable of existing under probably at least a thousand 
isomeric forms ; and, as we shall presently see, it is capable 
of forming, with itself and other elements, substances yet 
more intricate in composition, that are practically intricate 
in their varieties of kind. Exposed to those innumerable 
modifications of conditions which the earth's surface af- 
forded, here in amount of light, there in amount of heat, 
and elsewhere in the mineral quality of its aqueous medium, 
this extremely changeable substance must have undergone, 
now one, now another, of its countless metamorphoses. 
And to the mutual influences of its metamorphic forms, 
under favoring conditions, we may ascribe the production 
of the still more composite, still more sensitive, still more 
variously-changeable portions of organic matter, which, iu 
masses more minute and simpler than existing protozoa^ 
displayed actions varying little by little into those called 
vital actions, which protein itself exhibits in a certain de- 
gree, and which the lowest known living things exhibit 
only in a greater degree. Thus, setting out with induc- 
tions from the experiences of organic chemists at the one 
extreme, and with inductions from the observations of 
biologists at the other extreme, we are enabled to de- 
ductively bridge the interval — are enabled to conceive how 
organic compounds were evolved, and how, by a continuance 
of the process, the nascent life displayed in these becomes 
gradually more pronounced." * 

It is in this way that Spencer accounts for the forma- 
tion of the cell which becomes developed into a living 
organism, out of which are successively evolved all the 
higher forms of animal organisms, until we reach man. 

SoPHEREUS. And is this put forward as something 
which rational people are to believe ? 

* " Biology," i, Appendix, pp. 483, 484. 



352 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

KosMicos. Undoubtedly it is put forward as something 
that is to be believed, because it is supported by a vast ar- 
ray of evidence ; and let me tell you that this conception 
of Nature as a whole is the consummate flower of this 
nineteenth century in the domain of philosophic specu- 
lation. 

SoPHEREUS. Perhaps it is. But although this nine- 
teenth century has witnessed many great scientific discov- 
eries, and has produced extraordinary inventions, I do not 
find that among the speculative philosophers of this age 
there are such very superior powers of reasoning displayed 
that we ought to regard them as authorities entitled to 
challenge our acceptance of their theories without exami- 
nation. I must say that among your scientific people of 
the present day, and especially among the philosophers of 
the class of which Mr. Spencer is the leading representa- 
tive, there are certain tendencies and defects which surprise 
me. One of their defects is that they do not obviate re- 
mote difficulties, perhaps because they have not been trained, 
as other men have, to foresee where such difficulties must 
arise. This is sometimes apparent even when the difficul- 
ties are not very remote, but are quite obvious. One of 
their tendencies is to arrive at a theory from some of the 
phenomena, and then to strain the remaining phenomena 
to suit the theory ; and sometimes they proceed to the in- 
vention or imagination of phenomena which are necessary 
to the completion of a chain of proof. This last process is 
called bridging the interval. I will now apply this criti- 
cism to Mr. Spencer's philosophy of the origin of man. In 
the first place he has not obviated a fundamental difficulty, 
whether it be a near or a remote one. Where did the 
molecules get their tendency or capacity to arrange them- 
selves into higher and more complex forms ? Whence 
came the auxiliary or additional force of their surrounding 
environment ? What endowed protein with its capacity 



FOUNDATIONS OF THE WORLD. 353 

to assume a thousand isomeric forms ? What made the 
favoring conditions which have helped on the influence 
of its metamorphic tendencies, so as to produce still more 
sensitive and variously-changeable portions of organic mat- 
ter ? These questions must have an answer ; and, when 
we ask them, we see the significance of the inquiry, " Where 
wast thou (man) when I laid the foundations of the world ? " 
For these things, on the evolution theory, are the founda- 
tions of the world. It is no answer to say, as Mr. Spencer 
does, that these tendencies, or capacities of matter, and 
these laws of the favoring conditions, came from the Un- 
known Cause. Known or unknown, did they have a cause, 
or did they make themselves ? Did these, the foundations 
of the world, have an origin, or were they without any 
origin ? If they had an origin, was it from the will and 
power of a being capable of giving existence to them and 
prescribing their modes of action ? If they had no origin, 
if they existed from all eternity, how came it that they 
formed this extraordinary habit of invariable action in a 
certain method, which amid all its multiformity shows an 
astonishing persistency ? If we deny, with Mr. Spencer, 
the absolute commencement of organic life on the globe, 
we must still go back of all the traces of organic life, and 
inquire whence matter, molecules, organized or unorgan- 
ized, derived the capacities or tendencies to become organ- 
ized, and how the favoring conditions became established 
as auxiliary or subsidiary forces. And therefore it is that 
this difficulty, whether remote or near at hand, is not met 
by Mr. Spencer : for whether we call the cause an unknown 
or a known cause, the question is. Was there a cause, or did 
the foundations of the world lay themselves ? The reason- 
ing powers of mankind, exercised by daily observation of 
cause and effect, of creative power and created product, are 
equal to the conception of a First Cause as a being who 
could have laid the foundations of the world, but they are 



354 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

utterly unequal to the conception that they had no origin 
whatever. Again, consider how numerous are the missing 
links in the chain of evolution, how many gaps are filled 
up by pure inventions or assumptions. The evolution of 
one distinct and perfect animal, or being, out of a pre- 
existing animal or being of a different type, has never been 
proved as a fact. Yet whole pedigrees of such generation 
of species have been constructed upon the same principles 
as we should construct the pedigree of an individual. Fur- 
thermore, if we regard the facts about which there can be 
no controversy, we find not only distinct species of animals, 
but we find the same species divided into male and female, 
with a system of procreation and gestation established for 
the multiplication of individuals of that species. 'Now go 
back to the imaginary period when protein began to form 
itself into something verging toward organic life, and then 
there became evolved the nascent life of an organized be- 
ing. How did the division of the sexes originate ? Did 
some of the molecules or their progressive forms, or their 
aggregates, or masses, under some conditions, tend to the 
production of the male, and others under certain condi- 
tions tend to the development of the female, so that the 
sexes were formed by a mere habit of arrangement without 
any special intervention ? Here is one of the most serious 
difficulties which the doctrine of evolution, whether it be 
the Darwinian or the Spencerian theory, has to encounter. 
There is a division into male and female : there is a law of 
procreation by the union of the two sexes. This is a fact 
about which there can be no dispute. It is one of the most 
remarkable facts in Nature. It is the means by which spe- 
cies are continued, and the world is peopled with individuals 
of each species. Is it conceivable that this occurred with- 
out any design, that it had no origin in a formative will, 
that it had, properly speaking, no origin at all, but that it 
grew out of the tendencies of organized matter to take on 



THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS. 355 

such a diversity in varying conditions ? And if the latter 
was all the origin that it had, whence came the tendencies 
and whence the favoring conditions that helped them on 
toward the result ? It seems to me that the Spencerian 
theory, so far as it suggests a mode in which the two sexes 
of animals came to exist, is hardly less fanciful than what 
Plato has given us in his "Timasus." I have studied them 
hoth. 

If you will hand me Mr. Spencer's work from which 
you have just quoted, I will point out a passage which fully 
justifies my criticism. It is this : "Before it can be as- 
certained how organized beings have been gradually evolved, 
there must be reached the conviction that they have been 
gradually evolved." He says this in praise of De Maillet, 
one of the earliest of the modern speculators who reached 
this conviction, and whose " wild notions ^' as to the way 
should not make us, says Mr. Spencer, *' forget the merit 
of his intuition that animals and plants were produced by 
natural causes." * That is to say, first form to yourself a 
theory, and have a thorough conviction of it. Then in- 
vestigate, and shape the facts so as to support the theory. 
Is it not plain that an inquiry into the mode in which or- 
ganized beings have been gradually evolved must precede 
any conclusion or conviction on the subject ? It is one of 
those cases in which the how a thing has been done lies at 
the basis of the inquiry whether it has probably been done 
at all. If a suggested mode turns out to be wild and vis- 
ionary, what is the value of any "intuition" of the main 
fact ? But, what is still more extraordinary in this kind 
of deduction, which is no deduction, is the way in which, 
according to Mr. Spencer, the first conviction is to be 
reached before one looks for tlie facts. The process of the 
evolution of organisms, according to Mr. Spencer's philoso- 



Biology," i, p. 408. 



356 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

phy, is contained as a part in tlie great whole of evolution 
in general. We first convince ourselves that evolution ob- 
tains in all the other departments of Nature, and is the 
interpretation of all their phenomena. Then we conclude 
that it has obtained in the animal kingdom, and so we have 
the conviction necessary to be acquired before we examine 
the phenomena ; and then we make that investigation so as 
to reconcile the facts with the supposed universal laws of 
matter and motion. I do not exaggerate in the least. Here 
is what he says : " Only when the process of evolution of 
organisms is affiliated on the process of evolution in general 
can it be truly said to be explained. The thing required is 
to show that its various results are corollaries from first 
principles. We have to reconcile the facts with the uni- 
versal laws of the redistribution of matter and motion." * 
What would Bacon have thought of this method of estab- 
lishing the probable truth of a theory ? It leaves out of 
consideration a multitude of facts, and one of them at least 
is of the utmost importance. It is that in the domain of 
animated matter, in organized beings, and most signally in 
the animal kingdom, there is a principle of life ; and, what- 
ever may be the universal laws of the redistribution of mat- 
ter and motion, in their operation upon or among the prod- 
ucts which are not endowed with this principle, when we 
come to reason about products that are endowed with it 
we are not entitled to conclude that this principle of ani- 
mal life is itself a product of the operation of those laws 
because they have resulted in products which do not possess 
life, or life of the same kind. In order to reach the con- 
viction that animal organisms have resulted solely from the 
operation of the laws of matter and motion, we must not 
undertake to reconcile the facts with those laws, but we 
must have some evidence that those laws have produced 

* '' Biology," i, pp. 409, 410. 



BEGIifNING OF ORGANIC LIFE. 357 

living beings with comj)lex and diversified organisms, and 
this evidence must at least tend to exclude every other hy- 
pothesis. It is not enough to flout at all other hjrpotheses, 
or to pronounce them ex cathedra to be idle tales. 

KosMicos. You must not catch at single expressions 
and make yourself a captious critic. That would be un- 
worthy of such an inquirer as you profess to be, and as I 
believe you are. Mr. Spencer did not mean, by reconciling 
the facts with the laws of matter and motion, that we are 
to distort the facts. He meant that we are to discover the 
correspondence between the facts and the operation of those 
laws. JSTow, let me show you more explicitly that he is 
quite right. There are certain laws of matter and motion, 
discoverable and discovered by scientific investigation, which 
prevail throughout all Nature. The phenomena which they 
produce, although not yet fully understood, justify the as- 
sumption of their universality and their modes of operation. 
It is perfectly legitimate, therefore, to reason that the same 
laws which have produced the observable phenomena in 
other departments of Nature have had a like potency as 
causes by which the phenomena in the animal kingdom 
have been produced. Using this legitimate mode of rea- 
soning, Mr. Spencer traces the operation of those laws upon 
the primal molecules, which are peculiarly sensitive to their 
effects. He follows them through the successive aggrega- 
tions of higher combinations until he arrives at the pro- 
toplasmic substance, out of which, from its capability of 
assuming an infinity of forms, aided by the environing 
conditions, the simplest organic forms become evolved, 
and thus what you call the principle of life gradually arose 
through a vast extent of time. He is therefore perfectly 
consistent with himself in denying the absolute commence- 
ment of organic life on the globe ; for you must understand 
that he means by this to deny that there was any point of 
time, or any particular organism, at or in which animal life 



358 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

can be said to have had its first commencement, without 
having been preceded by some other kind of being, out of 
which the more highly organized being has been produced 
by modifications wrought by insensible gradations. If you 
will attend closely to his reasoning, you will see that you 
have small cause for criticising it as you have ; and, if you 
will look at one of his illustrations, you will see the strength 
of his position. Hear what he says : ^^It is no more need- 
ful to suppose an absolute commencement of organic life 
or a ^ first organism ' than it is needful to suppose an ab- 
solute commencement of social life and a first social organ- 
ism. The assumption of such a necessity in this last case, 
made by early speculators with their theories of 'social 
contracts ' and the like, is disproved by the facts ; and the 
facts, so far as they are ascertained, disprove the assump- 
tion of such a necessity in the first case." * That is to 
say, as the social facts, the social phenomena, disprove the 
*' social contract" as an occurrence taking place by human 
design and intention, so the phenomena of animal life dis- 
prove the assumption of such an occurrence as its com- 
mencement by divine intervention, or its commencement 
at all. 

SoPHEEEUS. I think I understood all this before, just 
as you put it, but I am not the less obliged to you for the 
restatement. In regard to society, I know not why the 
family, the institution of marriage, is not to be regarded as 
the first social organism, and the union of two or more 
families in some kind of mutual league is certainly the first 
society in a more comprehensive sense. I care very little 
about the theory of the social contract, as applied to more 
complex societies, although, as a kind of legal fiction, it is 
well enough for all the uses which sound reasoners nowa- 
days make of it. But the institution of marriage, the 

* " Biology," i, p. 482. 



ORIGIN OF LIFE. 359 

family, is no fiction at all ; it is a fact, however it was first 
established, and it was the absolute commencement of social 
life. But I do not hold to this sort of analogies, or to this 
mode of reasoning from what happens in a department, in 
which the actions of men have largely or exclusively influ- 
enced the complex phenomena, to a department in which 
human influence has had nothing to do with the phenom- 
ena. But now let us come back to the proposition that 
there never was any absolute commencement of organic life 
on the globe. I will take Mr. Spencer's meaning — ^his de- 
nial, as you put it — and will test it by one or two observa- 
tions upon his own explanation, as given in the elaborate 
paper in which he replied to a critic in the " North Ameri- 
can Review" a little more than four years ago.* In the 
first place, then, as to time. It will not do to say that 
there never was a time when such a product as life, ani- 
mated or organized life, had its first existence. To what- 
ever it owed its existence, it must at some time have begun 
to exist. It matters not how far back in the ages of the 
globe you place it : you must contemplate a time when it 
did not exist, and a point of time at which it began to exist. 
It matters not that you can not fix this time. There was 
such a time, whether you can fix it chronologically or not. 
In the next place, however minute the supposed gradations 
which you trace backward from a recognizable organism to 
the primal protoplasmic substance, out of which you sup- 
pose it to have been gradually evolved, and through what- 
ever extent of time you imagine these gradations to have 
been worked out by the operation of the forces of Nature, 
modifying successive beings, you must find an organism to 
which you can attribute life. Whatever that organism was, 
it was the commencement of organic life ; for, when you 
go back of it in the series, you come to something that was 

* Now contained in " Biology," i, Appendix. 



360 CREATION OR EVOLUTION-? 

not organic life, but was merely a collection of molecules 
or a product of aggregated molecules, that had a capacity 
to be developed into an animated organism under favorable 
conditions. *^It is," says Mr. Spencer, "by the action of 
the successively higher forms on one another, joined with 
the action of environing conditions, that the highest forms 
are reached." Some one, then, of those highest forms, 
something that can be called an animal organism, some 
being endowed with life, was the commencement of organic 
life on the globe ; and it is just as correct and necessary to 
speak of it as the "absolute" commencement as it is when 
we speak of Darwin's aquatic grub, or of the Mosaic ac- 
count of the creation of the different animals by the hand 
and will of God. l^either Mr. Spencer nor any other man 
can construct a chain of animated existence back into the 
region of its non-existence without showing that it began to 
have an existence. He can say that the affirmation of uni- 
versal evolution is in itself a negation of an absolute com- 
mencement of anything. And so it is theoretically. But 
this does not get over the difficulty. On his own explana- 
tion of the mode in which organisms have been evolved, 
there must have been a first organism, and in that first or- 
ganism life began. So that I am not yet prepared to yield 
my criticism, or to yield my convictions to a writer who is 
so much carried away by his theory. 

KosMicos. But you will allow that the theory is perfect 
in itself ; and why, then, do you say that he is carried away 
by it ? You ought either to give up your criticism, or to 
show that there is a superior hypothesis by which to ac- 
count for the origin of organisms, and one that is supported 
by stronger proofs and better reasoning. You have nothing 
to oppose to Mr. Spencer's explanation of the origin of 
organic life, excepting the fable which you find in the book 
of Genesis. 

SoPHEREUS. Undoubtedly the opposite hypothesis is that 



NECESSITY FOR AN ACTOR. 361 

which attributes to a Creator the production of organic life ; 
and whether the Mosaic account, as it stands, be a fable or 
a true narrative of an actual occurrence, what we have to 
do is to ascertain, upon correct principles of reasoning, 
whether the creating power can be dispensed with. Mr. 
Spencer dispenses with it altogether. He gives it a direct 
negative iu the most absolute manner. But the perfection 
of his theory depends upon its ability to sustain itself as an 
explanation of the existence of organisms without the in- 
tervention of a creating power anywhere at any time. I 
have already suggested the serious defect of his whole phil- 
osophic scheme as applied to the existence of organisms, 
namely, that the foundation of the theory, the existence of 
the molecules with their properties and capacities tending 
to rearrangement under the laws of matter and motion, 
those laws themselves, and the environing conditions which 
assist the process of adjustment and combination, must all 
have had an origin, or a cause. If we can get along with- 
out that origin, without any cause, without any actor lay- 
ing the foundations of the world, we can make a theory. 
But that theory can not sustain itself by such a negation if 
all experience, observation, and reflection amount to any- 
thing ; for these all point in one direction. They all tend 
to show that every existing thing must have had a cause, 
that every product must have had an origin, and, if we 
place that origin in the operation of certain laws of matter 
and motion upon and among the primal molecules of mat- 
ter, we still have to look for the origin of those laws and 
of the molecules on which they have operated. If we say 
that these things had no origin, that they existed without 
having been caused to exist, we end in a negation at which 
reason at once rebels. If, on the other hand, we reject, as 
we must reject, this negation, then the same power which 
could establish the laws of matter and motion, and give 
origin to the molecules and the favoring conditions by which 



362 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

their aggregated higher forms are supposed to have been 
developed, was alike capable of the direct production of 
species, the creation of the sexes, and the establishment 
of the laws of procreation and gestation. So that it be- 
comes a question of probability, of the weight of evidence^ 
as to whether we can explain the phenomena of species, of 
the sexual division and the sexual union, with all that they 
involve, without the hypothesis of direct intervention, de- 
sign, and formative skill of a boundless character. I have 
seen no explanation of the origin of species and of the sex- 
ual distinction, with its concomitant methods of reproduc- 
tion, that does not end in an utter blank, whenever it 
undertakes to dispense with that kind of direct design to 
which is derisively given the name of '^miraculous inter- 
position," but which in truth implies no miracle at all. 

KosMicos. I have to be perpetually recalling you to the 
first principles of Mr. Spencer's philosophy. You seem to 
think it enough to point to the existence of species and the 
sexual division, as if his philosophy did not afford the 
means of accounting for them by the operation of natural 
causes. Let me put to you, then, this question : If natural 
causes have produced a crystal, by successive new combina- 
tions of molecules of matter through gradations rising suc- 
cessively into higher forms, why should not natural causes, 
acting upon other molecules in a corresponding way, have 
produced organic life, or animated organisms ? If natural 
causes have evolved out of certain molecules the substance 
known as organizable protein, why should not the con- 
tinued operation of the same or similar causes have modi- 
fied organizable protein into some distinct and recognizable 
animated organism ? If you admit this as a possible or 
highly probable result, why should not natural causes have 
produced, in the course of millions of years, the division 
of the sexes and the methods of procreation and multi- 
plication ? 



NATUKAL CAUSES LIMITED. 363 

SoPHEKEUS. I will assign the reasons for not adopting 
the conclusions to which you expect me to arrive, in a cer- 
tain order. In the first place, the capacity of certain mole- 
cules to result in the formation of a crystal, under the op- 
eration of what you call natural causes, requires that the 
molecules, their capacity, and the natural causes should all 
have had an origin, call it known or unknown. The cause 
was of equal potency to produce the crystal directly, or any- 
thing else that exists in Nature. The same thing is true of 
certain other molecules which, under the operation of the so- 
called natural causes, have resulted in organizable protein. 
There must have been an origin to the molecules, to their 
capacity, and to the laws which effect their combinations ; 
and this cause could equally fashion an organism and 
fashion it in the related forms of male and female by direct 
intervention, for to such a power there is no assignable 
limit. In the next place, the distinction between inani- 
mate and animated matter, between beings endowed and 
beings not endowed with animal life, is a distinction that 
can not be overlooked ; for, although we find this distinc- 
tion to be a fact that has resulted after the operation of 
whatever causes may have produced it, we must still note 
that there is a distinction, and a very important one. It 
may be that the dividing line is very difficult of detection ; 
that it is impossible to determine in all cases just where 
organizable matter passes from dead matter into a living 
organism. But that at some point there has arisen a living 
organism, however produced, is certain. Now, suppose 
that what you call natural causes have operated to bring 
organizable matter up to this dividing line, the question is, 
whether we can conclude that they have had the potency 
to pass that line, and to lead of themselves to all the vary- 
ing and manifold results of species, the division of the sexes, 
and all that follows that division. Certain great facts 
seem to me to negative this conclusion. The first is, that 
17 



364: CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

we have species, whicli differ absolutely from each other as 
organisms, in their modes of life, and their destinies, how- 
ever strong may be the resemblances which obtain among 
them in certain respects. The second fact is, that each of 
the true species is divided into the related forms of male 
and female, and is placed under a law of procreation, by 
the sexual union, for the multiplication of individuals of 
that species. The third fact is, that no crosses take place 
in Nature between different species of animals — between the 
true species— resulting in a third species, or a third animal. 
It is true that multiplication of individuals of some of the 
lowest organisms takes place without the bisexual process 
of procreation, as where, in the severance of a part of an 
organism the severed part grows, under favorable conditions, 
into a perfect organism of the same kind, as in the analo- 
gous phenomenon of a plant propagated by a branch or a 
slip from the parent stem. But this occurrence does not 
take place among the animals which are placed for their 
multiplication under the law of the sexual union and the 
sexual procreation. The sexual division, therefore, the law 
of sexual procreation, and all that they involve, have to be 
accounted for. Can they be accounted for by the theory 
of evolution ? Wherever you place their first occurrence, 
you have to find a process adequate to their production. 
What, then, entitles you to say that the hypothesis of their 
production, by the capacity and tendency of organizable 
substances, when they have reached certain combinations, 
is superior to the hypothesis of a direct interposition and a 
formative will ? At the outset, you must begin with some 
interposition and some formative will ; you must account 
for the existence of the very capacities of matter to become 
organized under the laws of the redistribution of matter 
and motion, or you will end nowhere whatever. If you 
assume, as you must, that, in laying '^ the foundations of 
the world," there was exercised some interposition and some 



NATUKAL CAUSES LIMITED. 365 

formatiye will, you have a power which was just as adequate 
to the production of species, and their sexual division, as 
it was to the endowment of matter with certain properties 
and capacities, and the establishment of any laws for the 
redistribution of matter and motion. If you deny the ex- 
istence and potency of the original power in the one pro- 
duction you must deny them in the other. If you concede 
them in the one case, you must concede them in the other. 
Now, although the original power was equal to the endow- 
ment of organizable matter with its capacities for and tend- 
encies to organization, and may be theoretically assumed 
to have made that endowment, the question is, whether 
these capacities and tendencies, without special formative 
interposition, and by the mere force of what you call natu- 
ral causes, were equal to the production of such phenomena 
as the division of the sexes and all that follows that divis- 
ion. Can it with any truth be said that the so-called 
natural causes have produced any phenomena which can be 
compared, on the question of special design, to the phe- 
nomena of the sexual division, the law of sexual procrea- 
tion, and the whole system of the multiplication of indi- 
viduals of distinct and true species ? When I can see any 
facts which will warrant the belief that the origin of the 
sexes is to be attributed to the capacity of organizable pro- 
tein to form itself into new compounds, to the capacity of 
these new compounds to become living organisms, and to 
the capacity of these living organisms, without the inter- 
vention of any formative will specially designing the result, 
to divide themselves into related forms of male and female, 
to establish for themselves the law of procreation, and to 
limit that procreation to the same species, I shall, perhaps, 
begin to see some ground for the superior claims of the 
evolution hypothesis. I should like, by-the-by, to see a 
system of classification of animal organisms, based exclu- 
sively on the distinction between the bisexual and the uni- 



366 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

sexual, or the non-sexual, methods of reproduction, and 
without running it out into the analogies of the yegetable 
world. I fancy that it would be found extremely difficult 
to account for the bisexual division without reaching the 
conclusion that it required and was effected by a special 
interposition. At all events, I should like to see it explained 
how the asexual and the unisexual construction passed 
into the bisexual by the mere operation of what you call 
natural causes. 

KosMicos. You said, a while ago, that you had never 
learned any nursery-stories. Yet, all along, you seem to me 
to have been under the influence of the Mosaic account of 
the creation. Of course you have read it, and, although you 
did not learn anything about it in childhood, and now try 
to treat it solely as a hypothesis, without any regard to its 
claims as a divinely inspired narrative, it is certainly worth 
your while to see how completely it becomes an idle tale of 
the nursery when scientific tests are applied to it. Hear 
what Spencer says about the creation of man, as given by 
Moses : '^ The old Hebrew idea that God takes clay and 
molds a new creature, as a potter might mold a vessel, is 
probably too grossly anthropomorphic to be accepted by 
any modern defender of special creations." 

SoPHEEEiJS. Let us see about this. Let us discard all 
idea of the source from which Moses received his informa- 
tion of the occurrences which he relates, and put his ac- 
count upon the same level with Plato's description of the 
origin of animals, and with the Darwinian or Spencerian 
theory of that origin ; regarding all three of them, that is 
to say, as mere hypotheses. Whatever may be the supposed 
conflict between the Mosaic account of the creation and the 
conclusions of geologists concerning the periods during 
which the earth may have become formed as we now find 
it, the question is, on the one hand, whether the Hebrew 
historian's account of the process of creation is a concep- 



THE MOSAIC CREATIOK 36T 

tion substantially the same as that at which, we should have 
arrived from a study of Nature if we had never had that 
account transmitted to us from a period when the traditions 
of mankind were taking the shapes in which they have 
reached us from different sources ; or whether, on the other 
hand, it is so *' grossly anthropomorphic " and absurd that 
it is not worthy of any consideration as an occurrence that 
it will bear the slightest test of scientific scrutiny. Let any 
one take the Mosaic narrative, and, divesting himself of all 
influence of supposed inspiration or divine authority speak- 
ing through the chosen servant of God, and disregarding 
the meaning of those obscure statements which divide the 
stages of the work into the first and the second " day," etc., 
let him follow out the order in which the Creator is said by 
Moses to have acted. He will find in the narrative an 
immense condensation, highly figurative expressions, and 
many elliptical passages. But he will also find that the 
Creator is described as proceeding in the exertion of his 
omnipotent power in a manner which we should be very 
likely to deduce from a study of his works without this 
narrative, /we have, first, the reduction of the earth from 
its chaotic condition — '^ without form and void " — to the 
separation of its elemental substances ; then the creation of 
light ; the separation of earth and water ; the productive 
capacity of the dry land ; the establishment of the vegeta- 
ble kingdom, each product " after its kind " ; the forma- 
tion of the heavenly bodies as lights in the firmament, to 
make the division of day and night, seasons and years. y It 
is obviously immaterial, so far as this order of the work is 
concerned, down to the stage when the formation of the 
first animals took place, in what length of time this first 
stage of the work was accomplished ; whether it was done 
by an Omnipotence that could speak things into existence 
by a word, or whether the process was carried on through 
periods of time of which we can have no measure, and by 



368 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

the operation of infinitely slow-moying agencies selected 
and employed for the accomplishment of a certain result. 
/Confining our attention to the first stage of the work as we 
find it described, we haye the formation of the earth, light, 
air, the heavenly bodies, alternations of day and night, 
seasons and years, and the vegetable kingdom, before any 
animal creation. We then come to the formation of ani- 
mals which are to inhabit this convenient abode, and which 
are described as taking place in the following order : first 
the water animals, the fowls of the air, and the beasts of 
the field, ." each after its kind " ; then, and finally, the 
creation of man./ Respecting his creation, we are told that 
it was the purpose of the Almighty to make a being after a 
very different " image" from that of any other creature on 
the earth ; and whatever may be the true interpretation of 
the language employed, whether man was created literally 
" in our image, after our likeness," or according to an im- 
age and a likeness of which his Creator had conceived, there 
can be no doubt that what Moses described as the purpose 
of God was to make a being differing absolutely from all 
the other animals by a broad line of demarkation which is 
perfectly discoverable through all the resemblances that 
obtain between him and all the other living creatures.y^o 
this new being there was given, we are told, dominion over all 
the other animals, and the fruits of the earth were assigned 
to him for food ; he was formed out of the dust of the earth, 
the breath of life was breathed into his nostrils, and he be- 
came '^ a living soul."^ Let us now see if this statement of 
the creation of man is so "grossly anthropomorphic" as is 
supposed. You are aware that Buff on, who was certainly 
no mean naturalist or philosopher, and who was uninflu- 
enced by the idea that the book of Genesis was an inspired 
production, reached the conclusion that a study of nature 
renders the order of man's creation as described by Moses a 
substantially true hypothesis. " We are persuaded," said 



THE MOSAIC CREATIOlSr. 369 

Buffon, "independently of the authority of the sacred 
books, that man was created last, and that he only came to 
wield the scepter of the earth when that earth was found 
worthy of his sway." * You eyolutionists will say that this 
may be very true upon your hypothesis of his gradual de- 
velopment out of other animals, through untold periods of 
time. But now let us see whether Moses was so grossly 
unscientific, upon the supposition that God created man as 
he describes. If man was created, or molded, by the 
Deity, he was formed, in his physical structure, out of mat- 
ter ; and all matter may be figuratively and even scientific- 
ally described as " the dust of the earth," or as " clay," 
or by any other term that will give an idea of a substance 
that was not spirit. If Moses had said that man's body 
was formed out of the constituent elements of matter, or 
some of them, he would have said nothing that a modern 
believer in special creations need shrink from, for he would 
have stated an indisputable fact. He stated in one form 
of expression the very same fact that a modern scientist 
would have to state in another form, whatever might have 
been the mode, or the power, or the time in or by which 
the constituent elements were brought together and molded 
into the human body. So that the derisive figure of God 
taking clay and molding it into the human form, as a potter 
would mold a vessel, does not strike me as presenting any 
proof that the account given by Moses is so destitute of 
scientific accuracy, or as rendering his statements a ridicu- 
lous hypothesis. 

KosMicos. Well, then, it comes at last to this : that you 
consider the substance of the Mosaic account of the creation, 
independent of its authority as an inspired statement, to be 

* Quoted by M. Guizot in his " History of France," vol. vi, p. 328. 
Guizot observes that Buffon was " absolutely unshackled by any religious 
prejudice," and that he " involuntarily recurred to the account given in 
Genesis." 



370 CREATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

entitled to stand as a hypothesis against the explanations 
giyen to us by the scientists of the great modern school of 
evolution, notwithstanding those explanations are in one 
form or another now accepted by the most advanced scien- 
tific thinkers and explorers ? 

SopHEEEUS. I certainly do. But understand me ex- 
plicitly. As, after my study of the probable origin of the 
solar system, and our discussion of that subject, I expressed 
my conclusion that the phenomena called for and mani- 
fested the exercise of a formative will by some acts of spe- 
cial creation, so now, in reference to the animal kingdom, 
I have reached the same conclusion, for reasons which I 
have endeavored to assign, r I can see that the operation of 
the process which you call evolution may have caused cer- 
tain limited modifications in the structure and habits of 
life of different animals ; or rather, that limited modifica- 
tions of structure and habits of life have occurred, and 
hence you deduce what you call the process of evolution. 
But to me this entirely fails to account for, or to suggest 
a rational explanation of, the distinct existence of species, 
their division into male and female, and the establishment 
of the laws of procreation by which individuals of a species 
are multiplied — a process which does not admit of the 
production of individuals of an essentially different type 
from the parents, and which, so far as we have any means 
of knowledge, has never commenced in one species and 
ended in another, in any length of time that can be ima- 
gined, or through any series of modifications. | 

KosMicos. Let us postpone the farther discussion of the 
origin of species to some future time, when I will endeavor 
to convince you that both Darwin and Spencer have satis- 
factorily accounted for them. 

SoPHEREUS. Very well ; I shall be glad to be enlight- 
ened. 



A 



THE SINGLE-CELL HYPOTHESIS. 371 



THE SINGLE-CELL HYPOTHESIS. 



Note. — It will readily occur to the reader that Sophereus might most 
pertinently have asked : Whence did the primal cell originate ? It is con- 
ceived of as the ultimate unit of organizable matter ; invisible to the naked 
eye, perhaps incapable of being reached by the microscope, but consisting 
of an inlinitesimally small portion of matter, more or less organized in 
itself, and possessing a capacity to unite with itself other minute particles 
of matter, and so to form larger aggregates of molecules. The hypothesis 
is, that this single cell has given origin to all animated organisms, and, 
through an indefinite series of such organisms, to the human race. The 
single cell, then, having this capacity and this extraordinary destiny, was 
either the first and only one of its kind, or it was one of many of the same 
kind. If we select any supposed point of time in the far antecedent history 
of matter, the question may be asked whether there existed at first but one 
such cell, or many. If there were many of such cells, how came they to 
exist ? If one only was selected out of many, for this extraordinary des- 
tiny of giving origin to all the animated organisms, who or what made the 
selection for this transcendent office of the one cell ? H there never was 
but one such cell, how did it come to exist ? As these questions are clearly 
pertinent, the effort to answer them inevitably conducts us to the idea of 
creation, or else to the conclusion that the numerous cells and the selected 
one had no origin ; that the selection was not made, but was accidental ; or 
that the one cell, if there never was but one, was not a created thing. 
Human reason can not accept this conclusion. 



y 



CHAPTER X. 

" Species," " races," and " varieties " — Sexual division — Causation. 

The two friendly disputants liaye again met. Sophereus 
begins their further colloquy, in an effort to reach a com- 
mon understanding of certain terms, so that they may not 
be speaking of different things. 

Sophereusj/ I have more than once referred to the fact 
that Nature does not permit crosses between the true spe- 
cies of animals, in breeding, and that we have no reason to 
suppose it ever did. This is a very important fact to be 
considered in weighing the claims of your theory of evolu- 
tion. / I have been looking into Darwin, and I find it some- 
what uncertain in what sense he uses the terms '* species," 
"races," and "varieties." In his "Descent of Man," he 
devotes a good deal of space to the discussion of the various 
classifications made by different naturalists under these re- 
spective terms ; and there is no small danger of confusion 
arising from the use of these terms unless they are defined. 
The possibility of the process of evolution, as a means of 
accounting for the existence of any known animal, depends 
in some degree upon the animals among which, by sexual 
generation, the supposed transition from one kind of ani- 
mal to another kind has taken place. Darwin speaks of 
the difficulty of defining " species " ; and yet it is obvious 
(is it not ?) that the theory of the graduation of different 
forms into one another depends for its possibility upon 
the forms which have admitted of interbreeding. While, 
therefore, the term " species " is in one sense arbitrary, as 



LIMITS OF INTERBREEDING. 373 

used by different naturalists, and there is no definition of 
it common to them all, it is still necessary to have a clear 
idea of the limits within which crosses can take place in 
breeding, because there are such limits in nature. Thus, 
in the case of man, as known to us in history and by ob- 
servation, there are different families, which are classed as 
'^ races." Darwin speaks of the weighty arguments which 
naturalists have, or may have, for " raising the races of 
man to the dignity of species^ Whether this would be 
anything more than a matter of scientific nomenclature, is 
perhaps unnecessary to consider. Whether we call the 
"races " of men "species," or speak of them as families of 
one race, we know as a fact that interbreeding can take 
place among them all, and that between man and any other 
animal it can not take place. The same thing is true of 
the equine and the bovine races and their several varieties. 
Whether, in speaking of the different families or races of 
men, we consider them all as one " species," or as different 
species — and so of the varieties of the equine or the bovine 
races — the important fact is, that there are limits within 
which interbreeding can take place, and out of which it can 
not take place. Do you admit or deny that the barriers 
against sexual generation between animals of essentially dif- 
ferent types, which are established in nature, are important 
facts in judging of the hypothesis of animal evolution ? 

KosMicos. Take care that you have an accurate idea of 
what the theory of evolution is. Apply it, for example, to 
the origin of man, as an animal, proceeding " by a series 
of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature 
to man as he now exists." This expresses the whole theory 
as applied to one animal, man, without going behind his ape- 
like progenitors. It does not suppose a crossing between 
the ape-like creature and some other creature that was not 
an ape. It supposes a gradual development of the ape-like 
creature into the man as he now exists ; and, of course, the 



374 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

interbreeding took place between the males and the females 
of that ape-like race and their descendants — the descend- 
ants, through a long series of forms, being gradually modi- 
fied into men, by the operation of the laws of natural and 
sexual selection, which I need not again explain to you. 

SoPHEKEUs. Very well, I have always so understood the 
theory. But then I have also understood it to be a part of 
the same theory that there is important auxiliary proof of 
the supposed process of evolution to be derived from what 
is known to take place in the interbreeding of different 
races or families of the same animal. Whatever value there 
may be in this last fact, as auxiliary evidence of the sup- 
posed process of evolution, there must have been a time, in 
the development of the long series of forms proceeding from 
the ape-like progenitor, when an animal had been produced 
which could propagate nothing but its own type, and be- 
tween which and the surrounding other animals no prop- 
agation could take place, if we are to judge by what all 
nature teaches us. You may say that the laws of natural 
and sexual selection would still go on operating among the 
numerous individuals of this animal which had become in 
itself a completed product, and that to their descendants 
would be transmitted newly acquired organs and powers, 
new habits of life, and all else that natural and sexual selec- 
tion can be imagined to have brought about. But at some 
time, somewhere in the series, you reach an animal of a 
distinct character, in which natural and sexual selection 
have done all that they can do ; in which there can be no 
propagation of offspring but those of a distinct and pecul- 
iar type, and the invincible barrier against a sexual union 
with any other type becomes established. For this reason, 
we must recognize the limits of possible interbreeding. It 
is best for us, therefore, to come to some understanding of 
the sense in which we shall use the term "species." For 
I shall press upon you this consideration — that animals dif- 



PRIMEVAL MAK 375 

f er absolutely from each other ; that there can be no inter- 
breeding between animals which so differ ; and yet that, 
without interbreeding between animals having distinct or- 
ganizations, natural and sexual selection had not the force 
necessary to produce, in any length of time, such a being 
as man out of such a being as the ape. 

KosMicos. I will let Darwin answer you, in a passage 
which I will read. ^^ Whether primeval man," he observes, 
" when he possessed but few arts, and those of the rudestf 
kind, and when his power of language was extremely im- 
perfect, would have deserved to be called man, must depend 
on the definition which we employ. In a long series of 
forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to 
man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any 
definite time when the term ^ man ' ought to be used. But 
this is a matter of very little importance." That is to say, 
in the long series of forms descending from the ape-like 
creature, we can not fix on any one of the modified de- 
scendants which we can pronounce to be separated from 
the family of apes, and to have become the new family, 
man, because to do this requires a definition of man. Man 
as he now exists we know, but the primeval man we do 
not know. He may have been an animal capable of sexual 
union with some of his kindred who stood nearest to him, 
but yet remained apes, or he may not. It is not important 
what he was, or whether we can find the time when he 
ceased to belong to the family of apes and became the pri- 
meval man. The hjrpothesis of his descent remains good, 
notwithstanding we can not find that time, because it is 
supported by a great multitude of facts. 

SoPHEREUS. I have never seen any facts which I can 
regard as giving direct support to the theory. But, waiv- 
ing this want of evidence, doubtless it is not important to 
find the time, chronologically, when the modified descend- 
ants, supposed to have proceeded from the ape-like creature. 



37d CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

became the primeval man ; but it is of the utmost impor- 
tance to have some satisfactory grounds for believing that 
there ever was such an occurrence as the development of 
the animal man, primeval or modern man, out of such an 
animal as the ape. And therefore, without reference to 
the sense in which naturalists use the term "species," I 
shall give you the sense in which I use it. I use it to des- 
ignate the animals which are distinct from each other, as 
the man, the horse, the ape, and the dog are all distinct 
from each other. Speaking of man as one true species, I 
include all the races of men. Speaking of the apes as an- 
other species, I include all the families of apes. Speaking 
of the bovine, the equine, or the canine species, I include 
in each their respective varieties. ISTow, as crosses in inter- 
breeding can take place between the different varieties or 
families of these several species, and can not take place 
between the species themselves — between those which I 
thus class as species — the limits of such crosses become im- 
portant facts in considering the theory of evolution, because 
they narrow the inquiry to the possibility of effecting a 
propagation of one species out of another species. Take 
any animal which has become a completed and final product 
— a peculiar and distinct creature — ^whether made so by 
aboriginal creation or produced by what you call evolution. 
The reproductive faculty of the males and the females of 
this distinct and peculiar animal is limited to the genera- 
tive reproduction of individuals of the same type, by a 
sexual union of two individuals of that type. Their proge- 
ny, in successive generations, may be marked by adventi- 
tious and slowly acquired peculiarities ; but unless there 
can be found some instance or instances in which the pro- 
cess of modification has resulted in an animal which we 
must regard as an essentially new creature — a new species 
— what becomes of the auxiliary evidence which is supposed 
to be derived from the effects of interbreeding between 



THE SEXUAL DIVISION. 377 

those individuals whicli can interbreed ? I lose all hold 
upon the theory of evolution, unless I can have some proof 
that natural and sexual selection have overcome the bar- 
riers against a sexual union among animals which are di- 
vided into males and females of the several species, each of 
which is placed under a law of procreation and gestation 
peculiar to itself, and never produces any type but its own, 
KosMicos. You wander from the principle of evolution. 
I have to be perpetually restating it. Observe, then, that 
there are multitudes of facts which warrant the belief that, 
starting with any one kind of animal organism, however 
peculiar and distinct, the struggle for existence among the 
enormous number of individuals of that animal becomes 
most intense, and a furious battle is constantly going on. 
The best-appointed males, in the fierceness of the strife for 
possession of the females, develop new organs and powers, 
or their original organs and powers are greatly enhanced. 
Their descendants share in these modifications; and the 
modifications go on in a geometrical ratio of increase 
through millions of years, until at some time there is devel- 
oped an animal which differs absolutely from its remote 
progenitors which were away back in the remote past, and 
which began the struggle for individual life and the con- 
tinuation of their species or their race in a condition of 
things which left the fittest survivors the sole or nearly the 
sole propagators of new individuals. This struggle for ex- 
istence may have begun — probably it did begin — before the 
separation of the sexes, when the organism was unisexual 
or even asexual. That is to say, there may have been, 
and there probably was, an organism which multiplied with 
enormous rapidity, without the bisexual method of repro- 
duction. The vast multitude of such individuals would 
lead to the destruction of the weakest ; the strong survivors 
would continue to give rise to other individuals, modified 
from the original type, until at length, by force of this per- 



378 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

petual exertion and struggle and the survival of the fittest, 
modifications of the method of reproduction would ensue, 
and the bisexual division would be developed and perpetu- 
ated. 

SoPHEREUS. I confess I did not expect to hear you go 
quite so far. I will yield all the potency to natural and 
sexual selection that can be fairly claimed for them as 
modifying agencies operating after the sexual division has 
come about ; but I have, I repeat, seen no facts which jus- 
tify the hypothesis that they have led to distinct organisms 
between which no propagation can take place. But now 
you expect me to accept the startling conclusion that at 
some time the asexual or the unisexual method of repro- 
duction passed into the bisexual, without any formative 
will or design of a creating power, and without any act of 
direct creation. We know what Plato imagined as the 
origin of the sexual division, and that he could not get 
along without the intervention of the gods. What modern 
naturalist has done any better ? I have examined Darwin's 
works pretty diligently, and I can not get from them any 
solution of the origin of the bisexual division. I am left 
to reason upon it as I best can. We know, then, that in 
the higher animal organisms the individuals of each species 
are divided into the related forms of male and female, and 
that for each species there exists the one invariable method 
of the sexual union, and a law of gestation peculiar to 
itself. One hypothesis is that this system was produced by 
the operation of natural causes, like those which are sup- 
posed to have differentiated the various kinds of organisms; 
the other hypothesis is that it was introduced with special 
design, by an act of some creative will. If we view the 
phenomena of the sexual division and the sexual genesis in 
the highest animal in which they obtain, we find that they 
lead to certain social results, which plainly indicate that in 
this animal they exist for a great and comprehensive moral 



THE SEXUAL PASSION. 379 

purpose, which far transcends all that can be imagined as 
the moral purpose for which they exist in the other ani- 
mals. To a comparatively very limited extent, certain so- 
cial consequences flow from the law of sexual division and 
genesis among the other animals. But there is no animal 
in which the moral and social effects of this law are to be 
compared to those which it produces in the human race. 
Not only does the same law of multiplication obtain among 
the human race ; not only does it lead to love of the off- 
spring far more durable and powerful than in the case of 
any other animal ; not only is it the origin of a society far 
more complex, more lasting, and more varied in its condi- 
tions than any that can be discovered in the associations of 
other animals which appear to have some social habits and 
to form themselves into communities, but in the human' 
race alone, so far as we have any means of knowledge, has 
the passion of sexual love become refined into a sentiment. 
You may remember the passage in the '* Paradise Lost" in 
which Eaphael, in his conversation with Adam, touches so 
finely the distinction between sexual love in the human 
race and in all the other animals. The angel reminds 
Adam that he shares with the brutes the physical enjoy- 
ment which leads to propagation ; and then tells him that 
there was implanted in his nature a higher and different 
capacity of enjoyment in love. The conclusion is : — 

"... for this cause 
Among the beasts no mate for thee was found." 

In the human being alone, even when there is not much 
else to distinguish the savage from the beasts around him, 
the passion of love is often something more nearly akin to 
what might be looked for in an elevated nature, than it can 
be among the brutes. What do the poetry and romance 
of the ruder nations show, but that this passion of sexual 
love in the human being is one in which physical appetite 



380 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

and sentimental feeling are so "well commingled" that 
their union marks the compound nature of an animal and 
a spiritual being ? How human society has resulted from 
this passion, how in the great aggregate of its forces it 
moves the world, how in its highest deyelopment it gives 
rise to the social virtues, and in its baser manifestations 
leads to vice, misery, and degradation, I do not need to 
remind you. How, then, is it possible to avoid the con- 
clusion that in man the sexual passion was implanted by 
special design and for a special purpose, which extends far 
beyond the immediate end of a continuation of the race ? 

KosMicos. Why do you resort to a special purpose in 
the constitution of one animal, and to the absence of a 
similar purpose from the constitution of another animal ? 
In both, the consequences make a case of the post hoc just 
as plainly as they make a case of the propter hoc. It is just 
as rational to conclude that they only show the former as 
it is to conclude that they establish the latter. In man, 
we have the physical fact of the sexual division, and all 
you can say is that it is followed by certain great and va- 
ried moral phenomena. In the other animals, we have the 
same physical fact, followed by moral phenomena less com- 
plex and varied, and not so lasting. In neither case can 
you. say that there was a special and separate design, ac- 
cording to which the same physical fact was intended to 
produce the special consequences which we observe in each. 
Why, as the species called man became developed into be- 
ings of a higher order than the primates of the race or than 
their remote progenitors, should not this passion of sexual 
love have become elevated into a sentiment and been fol- 
lowed by the effects of that elevation, just as the gratifica- 
tion of another appetite, that for food, par exemple, has 
been refined by the intellectual pleasures of the social ban- 
quet and the interchange of social courtesies ? Is there 
anything to be proved by the institution or the practice of 



PERMANENT MARRIAGES. 381 

marriage, beyond this — that it has been found by experi- 
ence to be of great social utility, and is therefore regulated 
by human laws and customs, which yary in the different 
races of mankind ? Monogamy is the rule among some 
nations, polygamy is at least allowed in others. You can 
predicate nothing of either excepting that each society 
deems its own practice to be upon the whole the most ad- 
vantageous. You can not say that there is any fixed law 
of nature which renders it unnatural for one man to have 
more than one wife. In many ages of the world there 
have been states of society in which the family has had as 
good a foundation in polygamous as it has had in monog- 
amous unions. Looking, then, at these undeniable facts, 
and also at the fact that marriage, whether monogamous 
or polygamous, is an institution regulated by human law 
and custom, we have to inquire for the reason why human 
law and custom take any cognizance of the relation. We 
find that, among some of the other animals, the sexes do 
not pair excepting for a single birth. The connection lasts 
no longer than for a certain period during which the pro- 
tection of both parents is needed by the offspring, and not 
always so long even as that. It has become the experience 
of mankind that the connection of the parents ought to be 
formed for more than one birth ; shall be of indefinite 
duration ; and this because of the physical and social bene- 
fits which flow from such a permanency of the union. 
This has given rise to certain moral feelings concerning 
the relation of husband and wife. But we have no more 
warrant, from anything that we can discover in nature, for 
regarding the permanency of marriage among the human 
race as a divine institution than we have for regarding its 
temporary continuance among the other animals as a divine- 
ly appointed temporary arrangement. In the one case, the 
permanency of the union has resulted from experience of 
its utility. In the other case, the animal perceives no such 



382 OKEATION OK EVOLUTION? 

utility, and therefore does not follow the practice. Upon 
the hyjDothesis that all the animals, man included, had a 
common origin, it is very easy to account for the difference 
which prevails between man and the other animals in this 
matter of marriage, or the pairing of the sexes. As man 
became by insensible gradations evolved out of some pre- 
existing organism, and as moral sentiments became evolved 
out of his superior and more complex relations with his 
fellows, from his experience of the practical utility of cer- 
tain kinds of conduct and practice, the sentiments became 
insensibly interwoven with his feelings about the most im- 
portant of his social relations, the union of the sexes in 
marriage. This is quite sufficient to account for the differ- 
ence between man and the other animals in regard to the 
duration of such unions, without resorting to any inten- 
tional or divine or superhuman origin of that difference, 

SoPHEKEUS. For the purpose of the argument, I con- 
cede that this is a case of either the post hoc or the propter 
hoc. I have been pretty careful, however, in all my inves- 
tigations, not to lose sight of this distinction in reasoning 
on the phenomena of nature or those of society. I think I 
can perceive when there is a connection between cause and 
effect, when that connection evinces an intelligent design, 
and when the phenomena bear no relation to a certain fact 
beyond that of sequence in time. What, then, have we to 
begin with ? We have the fact that the human race is di- 
vided into the two forms of male and female, and that the 
passion or appetite of sexual love exists in both sexes, and 
that its gratification is the immediate cause of a production 
of other individuals of the same species. We next have the 
fact that this union of the sexes is followed by an extraor- 
dinary amount of moral and social phenomena that are pe- 
culiar to the human race. This sequence proves to me an 
intentional design that the moral and social phenomena 
shall flow from the occurrence of the sexual union, for it 



MORAL PURPOSE. 383 

establishes not only a possibility, but an immensely strong 
probability, that the phenomena were designed to flow from 
this one occurrence among this particular species of animal. 
If this connection between the original physiological fact 
and the moral and social phenomena be established to our 
reasonable satisfaction, it is the highest kind of moral evi- 
dence of a special design in the existence of the sexual- di- 
vision and the sexual passion among the human race. /You 
remember old Sir Thomas Browne's suggestion, that men 
might have been propagated as trees are. But they are not 
so propagated. If they were, no such consequences would 
have followed as those which do follow from the mode in 
which they are in fact propagated. These consequences 
are most numerous and complex, and they are capable of 
being assigned to nothing but the sexual division and the 
sexual union as the means of continuing the race. 7 Turn 
now to some of the other animals among whom th^re pre- 
vail the same bisexual division and the same method of pro- 
creation and multiplication. You find they result in sex- 
ual unions of very short duration, and that, if it is followed 
by phenomena that in some feeble degree resemble those 
which are found in human society, they bear no comparison 
in point of complexity and character to those which in the 
human race mark the family, the tribe, and the nation. 
And here there occurs something which is closely analogous 
to what I pointed out to you in considering the supposed 
development of the first animal organism. I said that al- 
though you may theoretically suppose that the first animal 
organism was formed by the spontaneous union of molecu- 
lar aggregates, and that the higher organisms were evolved 
out of the lower solely by the operation of causes which 
you call "natural," yet that when you come to account for 
the existence of true and distinct species, each with its sex- 
ual division and its law of procreation and gestation, you 
must infer a special design and a formative will, because 



384 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

there has never been suggested any method by which the 
so-called natural causes could have produced this division 
of the sexes and this invariable law of the sexual procrea- 
tion among individuals of the same species. Here, then, 
we arrive at a distinct moral purpose ; for, when we com- 
pare the different social phenomena which follow the opera- 
tion of the sexual division and procreation in man with the 
social phenomena which follow in the case of the other 
animals, we find a difference that is not simply one of de- 
gree, but is one of kind. We find the origin of the family, 
the tribe, and the nation : the source of the complex phe- 
nomena of human society. We may therefore rationally 
conclude that in man the sexual division and the sexual 
passion were designed to have effects that they were not 
designed to have in the other animals. To suppose that 
these vastly superior consequences in the case of man are 
the mere results of his perception of their utility will not 
account for the fact that when he does not recognize the 
utility — when he departs from the law of his human exist- 
ence — human society can not be formed and continued. 
Although it is possible for human society to exist with po- 
lygamous marriages, and even to have some strength and 
duration, yet human society without the family, with pro- 
miscuous sexual intercourse, with no marriages and no ties 
between parents and children, never has existed or can 
exist. Compare Plato's curious constitution of the body of 
"guardians," in his "Eepublic," and the strange method 
of unions, the offspring of which were not allowed to know 
their parents or the parents to know their own children. 
This was not imagined as a form of human society, but was 
entirely like a breeding-stud. Among the brutes, perma- 
nent marriages, families, do not exist, not because the ani- 
mals do not perceive their social utility, but because the 
purposes of their lives, their manifest destinies, show that 
there was no reason for endowing them with any higher 



MOEAL PURPOSE. 385 

capacity for the sexual enjoyment than that which leads to 
the very limited consequences for which the division of the 
sexes was in their cases ordained. But in the case of man 
there is a further and higher capacity for the sexual enjoy- 
ment, which becomes the root of his social happiness, and 
which distinguishes him from the brute creation quite as 
palpably as the superiority of his intellectual faculties. In 
all this we must recognize a moral purpose. 

KosMicos. Pray tell me why it is not just as rational to 
conclude that these moral phenomena, as results of the hu- 
man passion of love, have become, in all their complex and 
diversified aspects, the consequences of a progressive eleva- 
tion of the human animal to a higher plane of existence 
than that occupied by the inferior species, or than that 
occupied by the primeval man. When man had become 
developed into an animal in whom the intellect could be- 
come what it is, he could begin to perceive the social util- 
ity of certain modes of life, and from this idea of their 
utility would result certain maxims of conduct which would 
be acted on as moral obligations. Thus, commencing with 
a consciousness that the race exists with the sexual division 
into male and female, there would begin to be formed some 
ideas of the superior social utility of a regulated sexual 
union of individuals and of permanent marriages. These 
ideas would become refined as the progressive elevation of 
the race went on, and that which we recognize as the sen- 
timental element in the passion of love would become de- 
veloped out of the perceptions of a superior utility in the 
permanent devotion and consecration of two individuals to 
each other. If, then, by a moral purpose in the establish- 
ment of the bisexual division you mean that all these social 
phenomena of the family, the tribe, and the nation were 
designed in the human race to follow from that division, I 
see no necessity for resorting to any such moral purpose on 
the part of a creator, because they might just as well have 



386 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

followed from the progressive elevation and development of 
the human animal, supposing him to be descended from 
some pre-existing type of animal of another and inferior 
organization. The philosophy which you seem to be culti- 
vating closely resembles that which ascribes everything to 
the action of mind as its cause. This, you must be aware, 
it is the tendency of modern science to antagonize by a dif- 
ferent view of causation. What have you been reading, 
that you adhere so pertinaciously to the idea of a moral 
purpose adopted by some being, overlooking those physical 
causes* which may have produced all the results without 
that hypothesis ? 

SoPHEREUS. I have been reading a good deal, but I 
have reflected more. I may not be able to reconcile the 
metaphysical speculations of the different schools of phi- 
losophy by explanations that will satisfy others, but I can 
satisfy myself on one point. This is, that power, force, 
energy, causation, are all attributes of mind, and can exist 
in a mind only. Let us pass for a moment from abstract 
reasoning to an illustration drawn from familiar objects. 
A ton of coal contains a certain amount of what is scien- 
tifically called energy. This energy becomes developed by 
combustion, which liberates heat. The heat, when applied 
to water, converts the water into a vapor called steam — 
a highly elastic substance. The expansion of the steam 
against a mechanical instrument called a piston produces 
motion, and an engine is driven. The force thus obtained 
represents the energy that was latent in the coal. If we 
inquire whence the coal obtained this latent energy, there 
is a hypothesis which assigns its origin to the sun, which 
laid up a certain quantity of it in the vegetable substances 
that became converted into coal in one of the geological 
periods of the earth's formation. But in order to find 
the ultimate and original cause — the causa causans of 
the whole process — we must go behind the steam and its 



CAIJSATION". 387 

expansiye quality, behind the heat which converts the 
water into steam, behind the coal and its combastible qual- 
ity, and behind the sun and its indwelling heat, a portion 
of which was imparted to and left latent in the vegetable 
substances that became coal. We must inquire whence 
they all originated. If they did not create themselves — an 
inconceivable and inadmissible hypothesis — they must have 
originated in some creating power, which commanded them 
to exist and established their connections. Without a men- 
tal energy and its exertions, matter and all its properties, 
substance and all its qualities, the sun's indwelling heat 
and its capacity to be stored up in vegetable fiber in a latent 
condition, could not have existed, and the forces of nature 
of which we avail ourselves would never have emerged from 
the non-existent state that we conceive of as "chaos." I 
know very well that we are accustomed to associate with in- 
animate matter the ideas of power, force, energy, and causa- 
tion. But if we rest in the conception of these as acting of 
themselves, and without being under the control of an origi- 
nating mind or a determining will, we may think that we 
have arrived at ultimate causes, but we have not. We have 
arrived at subsidiary causes — the instruments, so to speak, 
in the control of an intellect which has ordained and uses 
them. Whether we look at the physical causes by which 
the early Greek philosophers endeavored to explain the 
phenomena of the universe, or at one of Plato's conceptions 
of a designing and volitional agency in the formation of the 
Kosmos, or to another of his conceptions, the sovereignty 
of universal ideas or metaphysical abstractions, we are 
everywhere confronted with the necessity for assigning an 
origin to the physical causes, or to the universal ideas ; and 
the result is that the idea of a supreme, designing, and voli- 
tional agency is forced upon us— it is upon me— by an irre- 
sistible process of reasoning, an invincible necessity of my 
mental constitution. I can not agree with Auguste Comte, 
18 



388 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

who regards it as the natural progress of the human mind 
to explain phenomena at first by reference to some personal 
agency, and to pass from khis mode of explanation to that 
by metaphysical abstractions. Nor can I agree with you 
scientists, who not only rest satisfied yourselyes with the ex- 
planation of the ultimate cause of phenomena by mere phys- 
ical agencies, but who insist that others shall not deduce a 
personal and yolitional agency from the existence of those 
physical agencies. To me it seems indispensable, in the 
study of phenomena, to recognize moral purposes for which 
they have been made to be what they are : and of course a 
moral purpose is not assignable to the physical agencies of 
matter, or to metaphysical abstractions. Hence it is that 
in reasoning on the phenomena of human society, I am 
obliged to recognize a moral purpose in the sexual division, 
of far greater scope and far more varied consequences than 
can be found in the case of the same division among the 
other animals. 

KosMicos. I put to you this question : What do you 
mean by a moral purpose ? In teleology, or the science of 
the final causes of things, you must find out the producing 
agencies. Let me give you a theory of causation, which 
will show you that your notion of a moral purpose is alto- 
gether out of place. The only true causes are phenomenal 
ones, or what is certified by experience. There are uniform 
and unconditional antecedents, and uniform and uncondi- 
tional sequences. Something goes before, uniformly and in- 
variably ; something uniformly and invariably follows. The 
first are causes ; the last are effects. We can not go farther 
back than the antecedent cause ; we can not go farther for- 
ward than the effect. We can not connect the effect with 
anything but the 'antecedent cause. When, therefore, you 
speak of a moral purpose, what do you mean ? Where do 
you get the evidence of the moral purpose ? What is the 
purpose, and what is the evidence of it ? 



NECESSAEY EEASONING. 389 

SoPHEEEUS. I answer you as I haye before — that the 
agencies which you call phenomenal causes could not have 
established themselves ; could not have originated their own 
uniformity ; could not have made the invariable connection 
between themselves and the effects. If we discard the idea 
of a moral and sentient being, a mind originating and or- 
daining the physical agencies, we have nothing left but 
those agencies ; and in this the human mind can not rest. 
It is not enough to say that it ought to rest there. It does 
not, will not, and can not. Science — what you call science 
— may rest there, but philosophy can not. It is unphilo- 
sophical to speak of the Unknown Cause, or the Unknown 
Power, underlying all manifestations, as something of which 
we can not conceive and must not personify. The ultimate 
power which underlies all phenomena necessarily implies a 
will, an intellectual origin, and a mental energy. That it 
is something whose mental operations we can not trace, is 
no argument against its personality, and no reason why we 
should not conceive of it as a mental energy. 

KosMicos. You have more than once referred to the 
constitution of the human mind as if it had been constructed 
with an irresistible necessity to attribute everything to the 
action of a being, an intelligence, and a will. You should 
rather say that some minds have trained themselves to this 
mode of reasoning, because they have first received the idea 
of such a being as the final cause, as a matter of dogmatic 
teaching, and they have tried to reason it out so as to attain 
a conviction that what they have been taught is true. It 
is in this way that they have found what they consider as 
evidence of a moral purpose. But you have no warrant for 
the assumption that the human intellect has been put to- 
gether in such a way that it can not avoid reaching the 
conclusion that all phenomena are to be imputed to the vo- 
lition of a mind as their producing cause. 

SoPHEEEUS. In speaking of the human mind and its 



390 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

incapacity to rest satisfied with what science can discover 
of immediate physical agencies in the production of phe- 
nomena, I have not overlooked the fact that the idea of a 
Creator has been dogmatically inculcated as a matter of 
belief. But I form my conception of the construction of 
the human mind from the operations of my own mind. I 
have not trained myself into any mode of reasoning. I 
have somehow been so placed in this world that, as I have 
frequently told you and as I am perfectly conscious, I am 
uninfluenced by any early teaching, and can judge for my- 
self of the force of evidence. When I say, therefore, that 
the human intellect is so constituted that it is obliged to 
regard mind as the source of power, I exclude all teaching 
but the teaching of experience. There can not be two 
courses of reasoning that are alike correct. If you uncover 
a portion of the earth's surface, and find there structures, 
implements, and various objects which you are convinced 
that the forces of nature did not produce, you must con- 
clude that they were the productions of mind availing itself 
of the capabilities of matter to be molded and arranged by 
the force of an intelligent will. You do not see that mind, 
you do not see the work in progress, but you are irresistibly 
led to the conclusion that there was a mind which produced 
what you have found. You can not reason on the phenom- 
ena at all, without having the conviction forced upon you 
that the ultimate cause. was an intelligent being. You can 
not explain the phenomena without this conclusion. How, 
then, can you explain the more various and extraordinary 
phenomena of nature without attributing their production 
to mind ? You have no more direct evidence that the Pyr- 
amids of Egypt, or an obelisk which has lain buried in 
the earth for thousands of years, were made by human 
hands, than you have for believing that an animal organism, 
or the solar system, was planned and executed by an intel- 
ligent being. In both cases, you have only indirect evi- 



AIMS OF SCIENCE. 391 

dence ; but ia both: cases that eyidence addresses itself to 
your intellect upon the same principles of belief. In the 
case of the pyramid or the obelisk, you refer the construc- 
tion to mind, because you see that mind alone could have 
been the real cause of its existence. In the case of the 
animal organism, or the mechanism of the heayenly bodies, 
you are obliged to reason in the same way. Hence I say 
that our minds are so constituted that there is but one 
method of correct reasoning, whether the phenomena are 
those which can be attributed only to human intellect, or 
are those which must be attributed to superhuman power 
and intelligence. Hence, too, I speak of a moral purpose 
as indicated by the phenomena. The pyramid and the obe- 
lisk were built with a moral purpose. The animal organ- 
ism and all that follows from it, the structure of the solar 
system and all that follows from it, were made to be what 
they are with a moral purpose. "When you ask me for the 
evidence of this purpose, I point to the fact that the phe- 
nomenal causes, as you denominate the mere physical agen- 
cies employed in the production of certain objects, were 
incapable of any volitional action, and that without volition 
the connection between the physical agencies and their 
effects could not have been established. The stone and the 
chisel were the immediate physical agencies which produced 
the obelisk. But who selected the stone and wielded the 
chisel ? And who designed the moral uses of the obelisk ? 
Procreation, by the sexual union, is the immediate physical 
cause of the existence of an individual animal. But who 
designed its structure, appointed for it a law of its being, 
and established the physical agencies which, brought the 
individual into existence and the moral consequences that 
those agencies produce ? 

KosMicos. We are no nearer to an agreement than we 
have been in our former discussions. And the reason is 
that you do not perceive the mission and the method of 



CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

science. Science undertakes to discover those causes of 
phenomena which can be yerified by experience ; so that we 
can truly say that our knowledge has been advanced, and 
that we really do know something of the things which we 
talk about. This is the domain of science. Its conclusions 
do not extend into the region of that which is unknown 
and unknowable. Inasmuch as its conclusions are strictly 
positive, because they are demonstrated by experience, they 
negative, as matter of knowledge, anything beyond. You 
may speculate about what lies beyond, but you have no 
reason for saying that you know anything about it ; where- 
as men who reason as you do, and yet who do not accept 
dogmas simply as matters of faith, are constantly trying to 
persuade themselves that they know something about that 
of which they have no means of knowledge. If you accept 
that something as a matter of faith, because you are satisfied 
with the evidence which establishes, or is supposed to es- 
tablish, a divine revelation, you have a ground for belief 
with which science does not undertake to interfere. But 
you have no ground for maintaining that, from the phenom- 
ena of nature alone, you can derive any knowledge beyond 
that which you can demonstrate as a scientific fact. 

SoPHEKEUS. I accept your definition of the aims and 
methods of science. But what I find fault with is the as- 
sumption that we are not entitled to say that we know or 
believe a thing which can not be demonstrated as a scientific 
fact, when we are all the time grounding such knowledge 
or belief upon reasoning that convinces us of the truth and 
reality of other things which in like manner are not de- 
monstrable as scientific facts. You may say that this is not 
the knowledge which we derive from scientific facts, and 
therefore it is not to be dignified by the name of knowledge. 
But we are always acting and must act upon proofs which 
are not scientific demonstrations ; and whether we call this 
knowledge, or call it belief, we govern our lives according 



AIMS OF SCIENCE. 393 

to it. We accept the proof that a buried city was the habi- 
tation and work of intelligent human beings, because we 
know that the forces of nature, not guided and applied by 
intelligent wills, never constructed a city. We accept the 
proof that men are just, merciful, courageous, truthful, or 
the reyerse of all this, because their actions prove it, al- 
though we can not look into their hearts. What does all 
the estimate of the characters of men rest upon, but upon 
their actions ? And is not this entitled to be ranked as 
knowledge of the characters of individual men ? 

KosMicos. We must each retain his conclusions. Let 
our next discussion relate to the origin of the human mind, 
and then we shall see whether you will be able to resist the 
origin which evolution assigns to it. 

SoPHEREUs. I shall be glad to meet you again. 



CHAPTER XL 

Origin of the human mind — Mr. Spencer's theory of the composition of 
mind — His system of morality. 

According to their appointment, our two disputants 
have met to discuss the origin of mind. 

SoPHEREUS. Will you begin this conference by stating 
the eyolution theory of the origin of the human mind ? 

KoSMicos. Most willingly. I have thus far spoken of 
the hypothesis of evolution as affording an explanation of 
the origin of distinct animals, regarded simply as living or- 
ganisms, differentiated from each other by the slow process 
of development from a common stock, by the operation of 
certain physical causes. I am now to account to you for 
the origin of the human mind, upon the same hypothesis, 
namely, that man is a development from some previous 
and lower organism. I acknowledge that what we call 
mind, or intellect, has to be accounted for ; and that we 
who hold the evolution theory of the origin of man as an 
animal must be able to suggest how his intellect became 
developed by the operation of the same natural causes which 
produced his physical organization. It is not material, in 
this inquiry, whether we agree with Darwin in assuming 
some one distinct living organism of a very low type, as the 
original stock from which all the other animal organisms 
have been derived, or whether we go with Spencer back to 
the primal molecules of organizable matter, and suppose 
that from a single cell have been developed all the organisms 



NERVOUS ORGANIZATION 395 

possessing life, in a regular order of succession. Upon 
either supposition, the doctrine of evolution explains the 
origin of the human mind. Eor, upon either supposition, 
there was a point in the long series of new forms, each de- 
scending from a pre-existing form, at which the manifesta- 
tions of what we call mind may be said to haye begun. 
This link in the connected chain of organisms occurred 
where nervous orgauization began to act with some spon- 
taneous movement, with some power of voluntary exertion, 
as distinguished from the involuntary exertions of a sub- 
stance that acted only in a certain and fixed way, although 
that substance was endowed with life. The substance of 
nervous organization is alike in all animals. In some it 
acts in a limited manner, and without volitional control ; 
in others, it acts in more varied modes, and it manifests 
some power of volitional control and volitional rest, as well 
as of involuntary movement. But in all animals the sub- 
stance of which nervous organization is composed — the 
substance which acts in producing movement, whether vol- 
untary or involuntary — is the same kind of physical struct- 
ure. In the higher animals, the great nerve-center is the 
organ called the brain. To this organ proceed the im- 
pressions produced upon one set of nerves by external ob- 
jects, or by light or heat. From the same organ proceed, 
by another set of nerves, those movements which the ani- 
mal is endowed with the power of making from within. 
Contemplating, then, the whole animal kingdom as one 
great connected family, but divided into different species, 
all of which have a nervous organization, we find that each 
species is endowed with the power of generating other indi- 
viduals of the same species and of the same nervous organ- 
ization. In the long course of development of the several 
species, or forms of animal life, there comes about a nervous 
organization which acts freely within certain limits, but in 
a fixed and invariable mode, so that the movements are 



396 CKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

uniformly the same, and not in any proper sense volitional. 
To such an animal we should not attribute any mind, for 
mind implies some power of comparison and variation, 
some ability to act in more than a prescribed way. This 
animal, which I have just supposed to possess a very limited 
power of nervous action, transmits that power to its de- 
scendants ; and in some of the successive generations the 
power remains always at the same fixed point. But the 
laws of natural and sexual selection are perpetually operat- 
ing among those descendants. In progress of time there 
comes to be developed another organism, which has a wider 
range of nervous action ; and, as this ceaseless process of 
modification and improvement goes on, there is developed 
still another nervous organization which acts with still more 
varied movements. As the different species of animals be- 
come evolved out of those that have gone before3 the ex- 
pansion of nervous organization goes on ; and as each new 
and higher and more complex stage is gained, individuals 
of the species have the power to transmit it to their descend- 
ants by ordinary generation. At length, as in some of the 
mammalia, a nervous organization is attained, whose action 
exhibits manifestations of what we call mind. There ap- 
pears to be a power of something like reasoning and voli- 
tion, because the nervous actions are so various and so much 
adapted to outward circumstances. Thus, before we reach 
the human animal, we find nervous organizations widely 
separated from those of the remote progenitor sj)ecies, be- 
cause they can do so much more, and can do it with an 
apparent pow^er of voluntary variation. At last, this pro- 
cess of modifications accumulating upon modifications cul- 
minates in an animal in whose nervous organization we find 
the freest, the most complex, and the most various power 
of receiving into his brain the impressions derived from the 
external world, and of transmitting from his brain to the 
different organs of his body those movements which the ex- 



ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 397 

ternal circumstances of his life, or his internal efforts, cause 
him to strive for and to effect. This animal was the pri- 
meyal man.* 

Looking back, then, to the primal source of all nervous 
organization, in the remote animal in which the nervous 
structure and action were at the crudest state of develop- 
ment, and remembering that there was a power of trans- 
mitting it to offspring, and that natural and sexual selection 
were unceasingly operating to expand and perfect it, we may 
trace the successive stages of its modification and growth, 
from the lowest to the highest, until we reach in the prime- 
val man the highest development that it had yet attained. 
But throughout all its stages, from the lowest to the highest, 
the system of nervous organization and action is the same 
in kind. "We do not call its manifestations or action mind, 
or speak of them as indicating mind, until we find it de- 
veloped into a condition of some voluntary activity and 
power of variation, as it is in many of the animals inferior 
to man. But in all the animals, man included, mind is the 
action of the nervous organization when it evinces a superior 
power of variation ; and we speak of the brain of such ani- 
mals as the seat of mind because that organ is the source to 
and from which nervous action proceeds. 

Let me now illustrate this view by the acquisition of 
articulate speech and the formation of language. In many 
of the lower animals with which we are acquainted there is 
a power of uttering vocal sounds, and of understanding 
them when uttered by their fellows. It must have been a 
power possessed by those animals which were the progeni- 

* Probably Kosmicos did not mean that man excels all other animals 
in the delicacy and perfection of his nervous organization, for some of his 
senses are inferior to those of some of the other animals, as his movements 
are less swift. Apparently his meaning is that, taken as a whole, the nerv- 
ous organization of man evinces the greatest power of variation and the 
widest range of action. 



398 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

tors of man in the long line of descent of one species from 
another. But in them it was a very limited power. It in- 
creased as the nervous organization and the vocal organs 
became in the successive species capable of a more varied 
action. The sounds of the external world impressed them- 
selves upon the brains of the primeval men more forcibly 
than they did upon the brains of the other animals, and ex- 
Qited the nervous organization to reproduce or imitate them. 
Those emotions and desires which originated in the brain 
itself — the impressions of pain or the sensations of pleas- 
ure experienced in the nervous system — sought expression 
through the vocal organs. Certain sounds repeated alike 
by the same individual, or by numerous individuals, for a 
long time, became associated in their brains with certain 
feelings or sensations. What are called words were thus 
formed ; which, at first, could have been nothing but the 
utterance of certain sounds by the vocal organs, expressing 
the sensations felt by the nervous organization, or the imi- 
tations of external noises. At length these vocal sounds are 
gathered in the memory, multiplied and systematized, and 
a rude language is formed. But, all the while, the first 
crude human language was nothing but the result of nerv- 
ous action excited to greater activity than in the other 
animals, accompanied by nicer and more capable vocal or- 
gans and a greater power of using them. This acquisition, 
obtained by the primeval men, was transmitted to their de- 
scendants as an improved physical organization, and in 
those descendants it finally reached the marvelous develop- 
ment of the most perfect languages of antiquity. 

Let us now retrace our steps back to the time when 
nervous organization, in the successive generations of the 
whole animal series regarded as one great family of kindred 
animals successively developed out of a common stock, be- 
gan to act in such a way as to evince the presence of what 
we call mind. Once attained, this improved nervous or- 



OEIGIN OF MIND. 399 

ganization would be transmitted by tlie parents to new in- 
dividuals ; and so on through countless generations, just as 
the offspring would inherit the same physical structure as 
tha-parents in other respects, 
.y Mental phenomena are the products of neryous organi- 
zation. We have no means of knowing that mind is an 
organism or an entity. If it is an existence capable of sur- 
viving the death of the body, which evolution neither af- 
firms nor denies, you must go to revelation for the grounds 
of belief in its immortality. There is no conflict between 
the evolution theory of the nature of mind and the , doc- 
trine of immortality as taught by revealed religion. J 

SopHEREUS. I am not disposed to constitute niyself a 
champion of revealed religion. I have lately read in the 
writings of some well-meaning persons, whose positions and 
convictions made them anxious about the truths of revela- 
tion, expressions of the opinion that there is no necessary 
conflict between the hypothesis of a revelation and the 
teachings of evolution. I have been rather surprised by 
such concessions. But through all our discussions, and" 
throughout all my reflections and inquiries, I have excluded 
revealed religion from the number of proofs of our immor- 
tality. But it seems to me that, as to the possibility of a 
survival of the mind after the death of the body, you have 
stated yourself out of court, not because you have pro- 
pounded something that is inconsistent with revelation, 
although it certainly is, but because you have made mind 
to consist in nothing but the action of nervous organiza- 
tion, and when that has perished what can remain ? You 
may say that science does not undertake to determine that 
mind is or is not a special existence capable of surviving 
the body. But, observe that you attribute to nervous action 
the production of phenomena to which you give the name 
of mind, when the nervous action evinces some power of 
volitional variation and control. Now, when and where 



400 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

did this begin, in the long series of animal organisms which 
you assume have been successively evolved out of one an- 
other ? Eemember that, according to the system of evolu- 
tion, there are supposed to have been countless forms of 
animal organisms, graduating by slow improvements into 
higher and higher organisms. Where and when and what 
was the first animal that possessed a nervous organization 
which would manifest the power of variation in so marked 
a degree as to render it proper to speak of the animal as 
possessing or evincing mind ? Are not the works of natu- 
ralists of the evolution school filled with comparisons of 
the minds of different animals, and do they not contend 
that in many of them there are manifestations of mental 
power, of the exercise of reason and comparison, and a voli- 
tional action according to varying circumstances ? Did, 
then, these manifestations of something like mental power 
begin in the anthropomorphous ape from whom we are sup- 
posed to be descended, or who is supposed to be of kin to 
us ? Or did it begin in any one and which of the innu- 
merable intermediate forms between that ape-like creature 
and the primeval man ? And when once this improved and 
improving nervous organization had been developed and 
put into a condition to be transmitted to descendants, until 
in the primeval man it had attained its highest develop- 
ment, what was it but a more sensitive, more various, and 
complex condition of the substance of which all nervous 
tissues are composed ? And when these tissues are decom- 
posed and resolved into their original material elements, 
where and what is the mind, whether of man or beast ? It 
is nowhere and nothing, unless you suppose that the im- 
proved and improving action of the nervous organization at 
last developed an existence which is not in itself material 
or physical, and which may be imperishable and indestruc- 
tible, while the material and physical organs. by and through 
which it acts for a time perish daily in our sight. If this 



OEIGm OF MIND. 401 

is a possible, it is a very improbable hypothesis, because the 
nature of the human mind points to a very different origin. 

I surely do not need to tell you that like produces like. 
If the mind of man is now a spiritual essence, it is a wild 
conjecture to suppose that it was generated out of the ac- 
tion of a material substance, in whateyer animal, or sup- 
posed species of animal, its genesis is imagined to have be- 
gun. AVe must therefore determine, from all the evidence 
within our reach, whether the mind is a spiritual existence. 
If it is, it is not difficult to reach a rational conclusion that 
its Creator contrived a means of connecting it for a season 
with the bodily organs, and made the generative produc- 
tion of each new individual body at the same time give 
birth to a new individual mind, whenever a new child is 
born into the world. We can not discover the nature of 
the connection, or the process by which generative produc- 
tion of a new body becomes also generative produc4;ion of 
a new mind. These are mysteries that are hidden from us. 
But the fact of the connection — the simultaneous produc- 
tion of the new body and the new mind — is a fact that the 
birth of every child demonstrates. Whether the union 
takes place at any time before birth, or whether it is only 
at birth that the mind, the spiritual essence, comes into ex- 
istence, and so may become capable of an endless life, we 
can not know. Bat that this occurs at some time in the 
history of every human being, we are justified in saying 
that we know. 

I shall now contrast your hypothesis of the origin of the 
human mind with another and a very different one ; and, 
in stating it, I shall borrow nothing from the Mosaic ac- 
count of the creation of Adam and Eve. I shall not assert, 
on the authority of Moses, that God breathed into Adam a 
living soul, for that would be to resort to a kind of evidence 
which, for the present, I mean to avoid, and which would 
bring into consideration the nature of the means by which 



402 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

the Hebrew historian was informed of the fact which he 
relates, and which he could have known in no other way. 
It would also giye rise to a question of what was meant by 
"a living soul." But I shall assume that there is a spirit- 
ual and a material world ; that a spiritual existence is one 
thing and a material existence is another. I shall assume 
that there is a spiritual world, because all our commonest 
experience, our introspection and consciousness, our obser- 
vation of what the human mind can do, its operations and 
its productions, its capacity to originate thought and to 
send it down the course of ages, its power to recognize and 
obey a moral law as a divine command, the monuments of 
every kind which attest that it is something which is not 
matter or material substance, prove to us that the human 
mind is essentially a spiritual existence ; and that while it 
acts and must act by and through bodily organs, so long as 
it acts in this world, it is a being quite distinct from all 
the physical substance and physical organism with which it 
is connected for a time. Physiology alone can teach us 
this much at least, that mind is not matter ; and experi- 
ence, consciousness, and observation teach us that while 
the action of the mind may be suspended for a time when 
the nervous organization can not normally act, from dis- 
ease or injury, the mind itself is not destroyed, but its ac- 
tion may be restored with the restoration of the brain to its 
normal condition. 

I am going to assume another thing — the existence of 
the Creator, the Supreme Governor of the universe, hav- 
ing under his control the whole realms of the spiritual and 
the material world ; alike capable of giving existence to 
spiritual entities and to material organisms, and capable 
of uniting them by any connection and for any purpose 
that might seem to him good. I shall assume this, because 
some of you evolutionists concede, if I understand rightly, 
the existence and capacities of the Supreme Being, since 



HYPOTHESIS OF THE FIRST PAIR. 403 

you assume, and riglitly, that the whole question relates to 
his methods ; and you believe that he chose the method of 
evolution instead of the method of special creation for all 
the types of animal life excepting the aboriginal and created 
lowest form, out of which all the others have been evolved. 
AVith these two assumptions, then, the nature of a spiritual 
existence, and the existence and capacities of the Creator, 
I now state to you the opposite hypothesis of the origin and 
nature of the human mind. 

A pair of human beings, male and female, is created by 
the hand and will of the Almighty ; and to each is given 
a physical organism, and a spiritual, intellectual self, or 
mind, which is endowed with consciousness and capable 
of thought. Why is this a rational supposition, aside from 
any evidence of the fact derived from its assertion by an 
inspired or a divinely instructed witness ? It is so, because, 
when this aboriginal pair of human creatures fulfill the law 
of their being, by the procreation of other creatures of the 
same kind, the offspring must be supposed to possess what- 
ever the parents possessed of peculiar and characteristic 
organization. This law of transmission is stamped upon all 
the forms of organic life ; and we may well apply it to the 
first pair of human beings. Its operation must have begun 
in them and their offspring. Every law that proceeded 
from the will of the Supreme Being began to operate at 
some time ; and this law, like all others, must have been 
put in operation by the Creator at some definite period. 
He created in the first pair a bodily organization, and he 
created in each of them the spiritual entity that we now 
call mind, and established its connection with their bodily 
organs. He established in them also the power of procre- 
ating offspring ; and this included the production of a new 
individual of the same species, in whom would be united, 
by the same mysterious bond, the same kind of physical 
organization and the same kind of spiritual or intellectual 



404 OKEATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

existence, which is not matter, and could not have been 
generated out of matter alone. The beginning of this con- 
nection of body and mind in the first parents was an occa- 
sional and special exercise of the divine power. It was not 
a miraculous exercise of power, because a miracle, in the 
proper sense, implies some action aside from a previously 
established course of things. It was simply a first exercise 
of the power in the case of the creation of the first human 
pair ; that is, it was the establishment in them, specially, 
of the union of the body and soul. Its repetition in the 
offspring, for all time, and through successive generations, 
was left to the operation of the laws of procreation and 
heredity. The nature and operation of those laws are 
wrapped in mystery ; but about the fact of their existence, 
and of the compound procreation of a new body and a new 
mind at every new birth, there can be no doubt whatever. 

It seems to me that this hypothesis has in its favor a 
vast preponderance of probability, because — 

1. The generation of mind or spirit out of matter is in- 
conceivable. 

2. The creation of mind by the Almighty is just as con- 
ceivable as his creation of a material organism ; and the 
latter is conceded by all naturalists who admit that there 
was a first animal organism ; and even some of the evolu- 
tionists hold that the first animal organism was directly 
fashioned by the Creator, although all the succeeding organ- 
isms were formed, as they contend, by natural and sexual 
selection. 

3. The nature of mind — of the human mind — is the 
same in all individuals of the race. They may differ in 
mental power, but they all possess an intellectual principle 
that is the same in kind. To the production of mind, or 
its formation, the process of evolution was not necessary. 
Not only was it unnecessary, but in the nature of things it 
was not adapted to do what it is supposed to have done in 



AKBITRARY ASSUMPTION OF A FIRST PAIR. 405 

the production of physical organisms. To suppose that the 
Creator, instead of the direct exercise of his power of crea- 
tion, left it to the material laws of natural and sexual selec- 
tion to produce a mind, is to suppose him to have resorted 
to a method that was both unnecessary and indirect, and 
was furthermore incapable of effecting that kind of product. 
In reasoning about the methods of the Creator, it is cer- 
tainly irrational to suppose him to have resorted to one that 
was so ill adapted to the accomplishment of his object. In 
the accomplishment of some physical objects, we may well 
suppose that they have been brought about by physical 
agencies that have operated very slowly and indirectly ; and 
we can see that this has often been the case in regard to 
many material products. But for the production of mind, 
for the accomplishment of a spiritual existence, there can 
be imagined no secondary agencies, no gradual growth out 
of antecedent existences or substances, no evolution out of 
some other and that other a material organism. The first 
mind, the first human soul, must have come direct from 
the hand and will of God. The succeeding minds may 
well have been left to owe their existence to the laws of 
procreation, by a process which we can not understand, but 
of which we have proof in the birth of every child that has 
been born of woman. 

Kos:micos. We now have the two hypotheses of the 
origin and nature of the human mind fairly before us ; and 
here I must point out to you wherein you do injustice to 
my side of the question. In the first place, your assump- 
tion of one pair of progenitors of the human race from 
whom have diverged all the varieties of the race, does not 
encounter the evolution process of man's descent as an ani- 
mal. It is either an arbitrary assumption, or it is derived 
from the Mosaic account of the creation, which, in a scien- 
tific point of view, and aside from the supposed authority 
of that story, is just as arbitrary an assumption as if the 



406 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

book of Genesis had neyer existed. Take, therefore, Dar- 
win's hypothesis of the zoological series : First, a fish-like 
animal, of course inhabiting the water ; next, the amphibi- 
ans, capable of living in the water and on the land ; next, 
the ancient marsupials ; next, the quadrumana and all the 
higher mammals, among whom are to be classed the 8imi- 
adw or monkeys ; and out of these came the hairy, tailed 
quadruped, arboreal in its habits, from which man is de- 
scended. This long line of descent is filled with diyersified 
forms, intermediate between the several principal forms 
which are known to us, and which were successively the 
progenitors of man. Now, hear Darwin on the subject of 
one pair of progenitors : 

" But since he [man] attained to the rank of manhood 
he has diverged into distinct races, or, as they may be 
more fitly called, sub-species. Some of these, such as the 
negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had 
been brought to a naturalist without any further informa- 
tion, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him 
as good and true species. ISTevertheless, all the races agree 
in so many unimportant details of structure and in so many 
mental peculiarities, that these can be accounted for only 
by inheritance from a common progenitor ; and a progeni- 
tor thus characterized would probably deserve to rank as 
man. It must not be supposed that the divergence of each 
race from the other races, and of all from a common stock, 
can be traced back to any one pair of progenitors. On the 
contrary, at every stage in the process of modification all 
the individuals which were in any way better fitted for 
their conditions of life, though in different degrees, would 
have survived in greater numbers than the less well fitted. 
The i)rocess would have been like that followed by man, 
when he does not intentionally select particular individuals, 
but breeds from all the superior individuals and neglects 
the inferior. He thus slowly but surely modifies his stock, 



ACQUISITION OF MENTAL POWEES. 407 

and unconsciously forms a new strain. So with respect to 
modifications acquired independently of selection, and due 
to variations arising from the nature of the organism and 
the action of the surrounding conditions, or from changed 
habits of life, no single pair will have been modified much 
more than the other pairs inhabiting the same country, for 
all will have been continually blended through free inter- 
crossing,"* 

The meaning of this is that if you go back to the period 
when an animal, by the slow process of modification which 
was continually operating among the preceding organisms, 
had been raised to the present state of man, and then fol- 
low out the divergencies into the distinct races of men, 
those divergencies would not have occurred in consequence 
of any one pair having been modified much more than the 
other pairs inhabiting the same country, but all the indi- 
viduals would have undergone a continually blending pro- 
cess through unrestrained intercrossing ; and those individ- 
uals of both sexes, who became in a superior degree fitted 
for their conditions of life, would have survived in greater 
numbers than the less well fitted, and would have trans- 
mitted to their posterity those peculiarities which tended 
at last to produce different races of the human family. So 
that the notion of a single pair of the negro variety, or of 
a single pair of the Caucasian variety, formed and com- 
pleted as an independent stock, is not necessary to account 
for these varieties. 

To apply this, now, to the slow production of man's in- 
tellectual faculties, we must, if we would do justice to 
Darwin's hypothesis of the method in which he was devel- 
oped as an animal, bear in mind that his mental powers, 
like his animal structure, have been the necessary acquire- 
ment of new powers and capacities by gradation, through 

* Darwin's " Descpnt of Man," pp. 608, 609. 



408 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

the perpetual process of modification, and retention and 
transmission of the new acquisitions. Darwin, indeed, does 
not professedly undertake the genealogy of the human 
mind ; but he appears to hold the oiDinion that in future 
psychology will be based on the gradual acquisition of each 
mental power and capacity, as distinguished from their 
complete production in any one pair, or in any one being ; 
and he refers to Herbert Spencer as haying already securely 
laid the foundation for this new psychology.* 

I take, therefore, the great English naturalist as the 
person who has most satisfactorily exjDlained the origin of 
man as an animal, and the great English philosopher as 
the person who has propounded the most satisfactory the- 
ory of the origin of the human mind. The two hypotheses 
run parallel to and support each other. Man, as respects 
his mere animal structure, is an organism developed by a 
slow process of modification out of preceding organisms. 
His mental faculties hare one by one grown out of the 
operation of the same physical agencies that have formed 
his animal structure, and they have not been bestowed at 
once upon any one pair, or upon any one individual of the 
race. After they have all been acquired, as we now know 
and recognize them, they have descended to the successive 
generations of the race. 

SoPHEREUS. I have studied Mr. Spencer's ^^ System of 
Psychology," but I do not know whether we understand it 
alike. You say that he has propounded the most satisfac- 
tory theory of the origin of mind. Assuming that mind 
was evolved as an aggregate of powers and capacities, slowly 
acquired, pari passu with the evolution of the animal 
organism, be good enough to tell me whether Mr. Spencer 
does or does not conclude that mind is anything more than 
an aggregate of powers and capacities of the nervous organi- 

* Darwin's " Origin of Species," p. 428. 



SPENCER'S PSYCHOLOGY. 409 

zation. I am quite aware of the mode in which he meets 
the charge of materialism ; but waiving for the present the 
question of materialism, I should be glad to know, accord- 
ing to your understanding of his philosophy, what he con- 
siders mind to be. 

KosMicos. To answer your question requires an analy- 
sis of Spencer's "Principles of Psychology." You have 
here on your table the third edition of that work, which 
received his latest corrections and additions.* If you look 
at the preface of this edition, you will see that, as between 
Eealism and Idealism, he enunciates a view which recog- 
nizes an element of truth in each, but rejects the rest. By 
this " Transfigured Eealism " he aims to conciliate what is 
true in Eealism with what is true in Idealism ; and it is by 
this conciliation that he answers the partisans of both sys- 
tems, who will not sacrifice any part of their respective doc- 
trines. It is important for you to remember this in judg- 
ing of his psychological system. He begins by a description 
of the structure and functions of the nervous system, and 
the nature of nervous actions. Without repeating in all 
its minute details the structure which he describes, it is 
enough to say that in all animals, from the lowest to the 
highest, this peculiar part of the organism which we call 
the nervous system is composed of two tissues which differ 
considerably from those composing the rest of the organ- 
ism. In color they are distinguished from one another as 
gray and white, and in their minute structures as vesicular 
and fibrous. In the gray tissue, the vesicles or corpuscles 
contain a soft protein substance, with granules imbedded in 
it, consisting of fatty matter. The more developed of these 
nerve-corpuscles give off branching processes, and the 
terminations of nerve-fibers are distributed among them. 

* " The Principles of Psychology," by Herbert Spencer, third edition. 

New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1885. 



410 CREATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

The white tissue is composed of miDute tubes containing a 
medullary substance or pulp, viscid like oil. Imbedded in 
this pulp, which fills the tubes, there lies a delicate fiber or 
axis-cylinder, which is uniform and continuous instead of 
having its continuity broken by fat-granules. This central 
thread is the essential nerve ; and the sheath of medullary 
matter, and its surrounding membranous sheath, are only 
its accessories. While, therefore, the matter of nerve-fiber 
has much in common with the matter of nerve- vesicle, in 
the latter the protein substance contains more water, is 
mingled with fat-granules, and forms part of an unstable 
mass ; whereas in the former, the nerve-tube, the protein 
substance, is denser, is distinct from the fatty compounds 
that surround it, and so presents an arrangement that is 
relatively stable. 

Conceive, then, of this interlaced physical structure ex- 
tending throughout the whole organism as a kind of circu- 
lar mechanism, having its periphery at the surface of the 
body and limbs, ramifying among and into the internal 
organs, with various nerve-centers distributed through the 
interior mechanism, and the one great nerve-center in the 
brain. Conceive of this structure, further, as fed continu- 
ally by the blood-vessels, which repair its waste of tissue 
and keep it in proper tone and activity. Then imagine it 
as first put in operation in some animal in whom it has 
become developed as we now know it in ourselves, and let 
that animal stand as the primeval man, who has become, 
by inherited transmission of gradual accumulations, pos- 
sessed of this consummate development of nervous organiza- 
tion. You can then observe the method of its action, and 
can perceive how mind became developed, and what it is. 

What I have now given you is only a general description 
of the structure of the nervous mechanism, and in order to 
understand its functions, we may take it up, in an individ- 
ual, at a point of time when it had not experienced a single 



NERVOUS ACTION. 4:11 

movement or change from a state of rest, but when it was 
completely fitted to act. Observe, then, that its action will 
consist in the origination and accomplishment of motion ; 
or, in other words, in molecular change of the substance 
composing the nerves, which, for illustration only, may be 
likened to the conductor through which the molecular dis- 
turbance passes which is popularly, but not scientifically, 
called the electric fluid. At the surface of the body and 
limbs, the external termini of the nerves are exposed to dis- 
turbance by contact with an external object. Along the 
highly sensitive and minute conductor, the nerve which 
has by contact with an external object at its outer extrem- 
ity received a slight shock, there passes through the fluid 
or semi-fluid substance of the nerve a wave of disturbance, 
or a succession of such waves. This disturbance reaches 
the brain, the great nerve-center, where it becomes a feel- 
ing. In this way is generated the feeling of contact with 
an external object, and this is what is commonly called the 
sense of touch, which is simply a feeling produced in the 
great nerve-center of the brain. Now, to reverse the pro- 
cess, let us suppose that this feeling, caused by touching an 
external object, provokes or excites a desire to remove that 
object, or to get rid of the continuance of the feeling, and 
to be without the irritation or pain which it is causing. 
From the central seat of nervous action, the brain, along 
another nerve, there proceeds a wave, or a series of waves, 
in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of which the conductor 
of that nerve is composed, and motion is communicated to 
some muscle or set of muscles, which need to be put in 
motion in order to break the contact with the external 
object. In like manner, all internal organs of the body, 
the viscera, are supplied with a system of nerves connected 
with the great nerve-center. If a disturbance arises in one 
of the viscera, some action that is abnormal, a sensation 
that is called pain is produced. So, too, in regard to the 
19 



412 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

normal action of the viscera, kept up by involuntary move- 
ments — those movements originate in and are transmitted 
from the nerve-center, by waves in the fluid or semi-fluid 
substance of which the special nerves are composed, whose 
ofiice it is to cause the necessary movements in the muscu- 
lar substance, or the tissue, of the particular organ. 

In this way began, in the supposed individual, those 
simpler states of feeling which pain or irritation produced 
in the nervous system, and those other involuntary move- 
ments which were essential to the normal and unconscious 
action of the viscera. These varying conditions of the 
highly sensitive nervous system, which constitute and are 
rightly denominated feelings, were constantly repeated ; 
and, so far as they are capable of becoming a part of con- 
sciousness, that consciousness is a repetition of the same 
nervous actions many times over. Pass, then, from the 
feelings called sensations to the feelings called emotions, 
and it will be found that while both are states of nervous 
action, the former are peripherally initiated and the latter 
are centrally initiated. The meaning of this is that a sen- 
sation is an effect produced at the nerve-center by the trans- 
mission, from the outer terminus of a particular nerve, 
of the waves in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of the 
nerve. The strong forms of feeling called sensations are 
peripherally initiated, and the feelings called emotions are 
centrally initiated. JSTow, any feeling of any kind is direct- 
ly known by each person in no other place than his own 
consciousness ; and the question is. Of what is conscious- 
ness composed ? In order to afford an answer to this ques- 
tion, Mr. Spencer proceeds to examine the substance of 
mind, and then passes to a consideration of the compo- 
sition of mind. These are not the same thing ; for, if 
there be no such thing, properly speaking, as the substance 
of mind, its composition, or its nature, must be looked for 
in another way. The expression '* substance of mind," if 



SPENCER'S COMPOSITION OF MIND. 413 

nsed in any way but that in which we use the x of an alge- 
braic equation, has no meaning. If we undertake to inter- 
pret mind in the terms of matter, as crude materialism 
does, we are at once brought to this result, that we know, 
and can know, nothing of the ultimate substance of either. 
We know matter only as forms of certain units ; but the 
ultimate unit, of which the ultimate homogeneous units 
are probably composed, must remain absolutely unknown. 
In like manner, if mind consists of homogeneous units of 
feeling, the ultimate unit, as a substance, must remain un- 
known. When, therefore, we think of the substance of 
mind, the simplest form under which we can think of it is 
nothiug but a symbol of something that can neyer be ren- 
dered into thought, just as the concept we form to ourselves 
of matter is but the symbol of some form of power abso- 
lutely and forever unknown to us, as the representation of 
all objective activities in terms of motion is only a symbolic 
representation, and not a knowledge of them. Symbols of 
unknown forms of existence, whether in the case of matter, 
motion, or mind, are mere representations which do not 
determine anything about the ultimate substance of either. 
"Our only course is constantly to recognize our symbols as 
symbols only, and to rest content with that duality of them 
which our constitution necessitates. The unknowable as 
manifested to us within the limits of consciousness in the 
shape of feeling, being no less inscrutable than the un- 
knowable as manifested beyond the limits of consciousness 
in other shapes, we approach no nearer to understanding 
the last by rendering it into the first." * 

Discarding, then, the expression "substance of mind," 
excepting as a mere symbol, Mr. Spencer passes to the 
" composition of mind"; and here we reach his explana- 
tion of mind as an evolution traceable through ascending 



Principles of Psychology," i, p. 162. 



414 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

stages of composition, conformably to the laws of evolution 
in general, so that the composition of mind, as something 
eyolved out of simple elements, does not need or inyolve a 
symbolical representation in the terms of matter. 

The method of composition, by which the whole fabric 
of mind is constituted, from the formation of its simplest 
feelings up to the formation of the complex aggregates of 
feelings which are its highest developments, can now be 
sketched. A sensation is formed by the consolidation of 
successive units of feeling ; but the feelings called sensa- 
tions can not of themselves constitute mind, even when 
many of different kinds are present together. When, how- 
ever, each sensation, as it occurs, is linked in association 
with the faint forms of previous sensations of the same 
kind, mind is constituted ; for, by the consolidation of suc- 
cessive sensations, there is formed a knowledge of the par- 
ticular sensation as a distinct subject of what we call 
thought, or the smallest separable portion of thought as 
distinguished from mere confused sentiency. Thus, as the 
primitive units of feeling are compounded into sensations, 
by the same method simple sensations, and the relations 
among them, are compounded into states of definite con- 
sciousness. The next highest stage of mental composition 
is a repetition of the same process. Take a special object, 
which produces in us a vivid cluster of related sensations. 
When these are united with the faint forms of like clusters 
that have been before produced by such objects, we know 
the object. Knowledge of it is the assimilation of the 
combined group of real feelings which it excites, with one 
or more preceding ideal groups which were once excited 
by objects of the same kind ; and, when the series of ideal 
groups is large, the knowledge is clear. In the same way, 
by the connections between each special cluster of related 
sensations produced by one object, and the special clusters 
generated by other objects, a wider knowledge is obtained. 



"TRANSFIGUKED REALISM." 415 

By assimilating the more or less complex relations ex- 
hibited in. the actions of things in space and time, with 
other such complex relations, knowledge of the powers and 
habits of things is constituted. If we can not so assimi- 
late them, or parts of them, we haye no knowledge of their 
actions. So it is, without definite limit, through those 
tracts of higher consciousness which are formed of clusters 
of clusters of feelings held together by extremely involyed 
relations. This law of the composition of mind is, there- 
fore, the assimilation of real feelings and groups of real 
feelings with the ideal feelings or ideal groups of feelings 
which objects of the same kind once produced. You can 
follow out, without my assistance, the correspondence 
which Mr. Spencer exhibits between the views of mental 
composition and the general truths respecting nervous 
structure and nervous functions with which he began the 
treatment of mind, which consists largely, and in one sense 
entirely, of feelings. The inferior tracts of consciousness 
are constituted by feelings ; and the feelings are the mate- 
rials out of which are constituted the superior tracts of 
consciousness, and thus intellect is evolved by structural 
combination. ** Everywhere feeling is the substance of 
which, when it is present, intellect is the form. And 
where intellect is not present, or but little present, mind 
consists of feelings that are unformed or but little 
formed." * Does not this statement, which in substance is 
Mr. Spencer's explanation of the formation of mind, ex- 
plain to you why he denominates it ^'transfigured real- 
ism"? 

SoPHEREUS. I have attentively and carefully read Mr. 
Spencer's book from which you have made this partial 
analysis of his view of the nature of mind, but whether it 
is realism "transfigured," or whatever is, I think it must 

* " Principles of Psychology," ii, p. 603. 



416 CEEATION OK EVOLUTION? 

be admitted that its basis is a truly realistic one ; for it 
comes back at last to just what I suggested to you at the 
beginning of this discussion, that mind, according to his 
view, is constituted by the action of the nervous system, or, 
in other words, that mind consists of the phenomena of 
movements which take place in a physical structure. If 
this is all that can be predicated of mind, it is not some- 
thing that can have an independent and continuous exist- 
ence after the dissolution of the physical structure called 
the nervous system. That structure is one that is analo- 
gous in its action to the other part of the organism by 
which digestion, or the assimilation of food, is carried on. 
We might as well suppose that by the action of the digest- 
ive system there has been constituted a something which 
will remain as a digestive function after the organs of di- 
gestion have perished, as to suppose that the action of the 
nervous system has constituted a something which will re- 
main mind, a conscious and independent existence, after 
the nervous system has been resolved into its original mate- 
rial elements. Indeed, I do not understand Mr. Spencer's 
philosophy as including, providing for, or leading to, any 
possible continued existence of the mind after the death of 
the body. . He seems to exclude it altogether. There is a 
passage at the end of one of his chapters which appears to 
be a summary of his whole philosophic scheme, and which 
is one of the dreariest conclusions I have ever met with. 
"Once more," he says, "we are brought round to the con- 
clusion repeatedly reached by other routes, that behind all 
manifestations, inner and outer, there is a Power manifested. 
Here, as before, it has become clear that while the nature 
of this Power can not be known, while we lack the faculty 
of forming even the dimmest conception of it, yet its uni- 
versal presence is the absolute fact without which there 
can be no relative facts. Every feeling and thought being 
but transitory, an entire life made up of such feelings 



DEFECT OF THE SPENOERIAN PHILOSOPHY. 417 

and thoughts being also but transitory, nay, the objects 
amid which life is passed, though less transitory, being 
severally in course of losing their individualities quickly or 
slowly ; we learn that the one thing permanent is the Un- 
knowable Reality hidden under all these changing shapes." * 
I will not say that the mournful character of this hope- 
lessness of human destiny is proof of its unsoundness. I 
have accustomed myself to accept results, whatever may be 
the gloom in which they involve us, provided they are de- 
ductions of sound reasoning ; and our wishes or hopes can 
not change the constitution of the universe or become 
important evidence for or against any view of what that 
constitution is. But let me ask, what does this philosopher 
mean by the transitory character of an entire life made up 
of transitory feelings and thoughts, occupied throughout 
their continuance with transitory objects, or objects which 
are quickly or slowly losing their individualities ? What 
possible room does he leave for the development and disci- 
pline of an immortal being, supposing that man is an im- 
mortal being, by an entire life passed in feelings, thoughts, 
and action about objects which, relatively to the individual, 
may, quickly or slowly, pass away from him? Or, what 
room does he allow for the effect on such a being of an 
entire life spent in the pursuit of objects or the enjoyment 
of pleasures which develop only his baser nature and unfit 
him for anything else? In any scheme of philosophy 
which omits to regard this life as a preparatory school for 
some other life, it seems to me that something is left out 
which ought to be included, and which ought to be includ- 
ed for the very reason that the evidence which tends to 
show that mind is not constituted as Mr. Spencer supposes, 
but that it is an existence of a special character, not gener- 
ated by the action of a physical structure, but deriving its 

* " Priaciples of Psychology," ii, p. 503. 



418 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

existence from the direct action of the creating Power, is 
so strong that, if we leave this conclusion out of the hy- 
pothesis, we shall have left out the strongest probabilities 
of the case. It is no answer to the necessity for includ- 
ing this conclusion to say that there is a power which 
we can not know, or an Unknowable Reality hidden un- 
der all changing manifestations, among which are those 
of mind. A study of those manifestations leads rightly to 
some conclusions respecting the Power which underlies all 
manifestations. It is necessary, therefore, to subject Mr. 
Spencer's philosophy of mind to the further inquiry. How 
does he account for the moral sense ? How does he explain 
that part of consciousness which recognizes moral obliga- 
tions — the recognition of moral law and duty ? We may 
easily dispense with the phrase "substance of the mind," 
if we wish to avoid a term of matter ; but if mind is con- 
stituted by the perception of feelings excited in the nervous 
system, what is it that perceives ? Is there a something 
that is reached by the feelings which constitute sensations 
in the great nerve-center, which takes cognizance of them, 
which combines them into portions of consciousness, or is 
consciousness nothing but a succession of sensations, and if 
so, what is "thought"? And what is that portion of 
thought which takes cognizance of moral duty, and which 
shows man to be capable of recognizing and obeying or 
breaking a moral law ? I have somewhere read a suggestion 
that the polity which is said to have been given to the He- 
brew people on the Mount of Sinai, and which is described 
as ten statutes written on two tablets of stone, consisted of 
five laws on one tablet and five on the other ; one set of 
them expressing the relations of the Hebrews to the Deity, 
and the other being the fundamental laws of the social life 
which the Hebrews were commanded to lead. This division 
is not accurate, because the commandments which express 
the relations of the Hebrews to the Deity are four in num- 



COMMANDS GIVEN TO THE HEBEEWS. 419 

ber, and the commandments which were to constitute their 
social law are six. But that there is a line of demarkation 
between the two kinds of laws is obvious, and how they 
were written on the tgJDlets, or whether they were written 
at all, is immaterial./^Looking, then, first at the social law, 
whether there was more or less of the same ethical charac- 
ter in the codes of other ancient peoples, or whether the 
social law which is said to have been delivered to Moses and 
by him communicated to his nation stands as an embodi- 
ment of morality unequaled by anything that had preceded 
it, it is certain that it found the Hebrew people capable of 
the idea of law as a divine command. ;' It is true that the 
corner-stone of the whole superstructure is to be found in 
the fact that the several commands which constituted this 
social code — ^' Honor thy father and thy mother," "Thou 
shalt do no murder," **Thou shalt not commit adultery," 
"Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not bear false wit- 
ness against thy neighbor," "Thou shalt not covet thy 
neighbor's house," etc. — were addressed to a people to whose 
representatives the Almighty is supposed to have revealed 
himself amid "thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud 
upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud, 
and all the people that were in the camp [below] trembled. " 
It is also true that the first of these awful annunciations 
was said to have been, "I am the Lord thy God, which 
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of 
bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before [or beside] 
me."* So that the source whence all the following com- 
mands proceeded was the one and only God, who is de- 
scribed as having thus revealed himself in fire and cloud 
and earthquake, and thus to have secured instant and im- 
plicit faith in what he spoke. But what he is asserted to 
have said was addressed to human minds. This is in one 

* Revised version. 



420 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

aspect the most important fact in tlie whole Hebrew his- 
tory. It makes no difference whether Moses performed a 
piece of jugglery, or whether he actually went within the 
fire and the cloud, and actually spoke with God and re- 
ceived" his commands. The indisputable truth remains that 
the individual minds of the Hebrew people, whom Moses 
had led out of Egypt, receiyed and obeyed, as divine com- 
mands, an original and unique moral code, because they 
were so constituted that they could embrace and act upon 
the idea of law emanating from another than an earthly or 
a human source. What, then, was this constitution of the 
human mind, that could thus receive and act upon a divine 
command ; and what is it now ? It matters not, in the view 
in which I ask this question, whether there was any deceit 
practiced or not, or whether there is any practiced now in 
respect to the authority giving the command. What is to 
be accounted for is the capacity of the human mind to em- 
brace and accept the idea of a moral law, be it that of Moses, 
or of Christ, or of Mohammed. 

KosMicos. I am glad that you put this matter of the 
ten commandments hypothetically, because otherwise we 
might have been led aside into an argument about the au- 
thenticity of the narrative. I recognize, however, the bear- 
ing of the question which you have put, and shall endeavor 
to answer it. Your question implies that the essential con- 
stitution of the human mind has been the same in all ages ; 
that it was the same in this race of nomads, who had been, 
they and their fathers for ages, serfs of the Egyptian kings, 
that it is in us. Perhaps this assumption may be allowed ; 
and, at all events, the real question is. How did the idea of 
a moral law originate, and what is the sense of moral obli- 
gation ? Like all things else, it is a product of the process 
of evolution. I shall not argue this by any elaborate rea- 
soning, but will proceed to state the grounds on which it 
rests. I will first give you what I understand to be Par- 



DARWIN'S ORIGIN OF MORALITY. 421 

win's view of the origin of the habit of thinking and feel- 
ing, which we call the moral sense. Primeval man must 
have existed in a state of barbarism. When he had become 
developed out of some pre-existing animal, he was a mere 
savage, distinguishable from his predecessors only by the 
possession of some superior degree of mental power. Sav- 
ages, like some other animals, form themselves into tribes 
or bands. Certain social instincts arise, out of which spring 
w^hat are regarded as virtues. Individuals of the tribe begin 
to desire the sympathy and approbation of their fellows. 
They perceive that certain actions, such as protection of 
other and weaker individuals against danger, gain for them 
the sympathy and approbation of the tribe. There are thus 
formed some ideas of the common advantage to the tribe of 
certain actions, and of the common disadvantage of the op- 
posite actions. Man is eminently a social animal, and this 
desire for the sympathy and approbation of his tribe, and 
this fear of their disapprobation, is so strong that the indi- 
vidual savage is led to perceive that the common good of 
the tribe is the object at which he must aim to conform. 
The first social instincts, therefore, are those which per- 
ceive the relations between certain kinds of conduct and the 
common good of the tribe ; and out of these relations, with 
the aid of increasing intellectual powers, is developed the 
golden rule, *^ As ye would that men should do to you, do 
ye to them likewise," which lies at the foundation -of mo- 
rality. These social instincts, thus leading at last to the 
great rule of social morality, are developed very slowly. 
They are at first confined to the benefit of the same tribe, 
and they have no force in the relations of that tribe to the 
members of any other. To a savage it is a highly meri- 
torious action to save the life of another member of his 
own tribe, and if he loses his own life in the effort it is so 
much the more meritorious. But he does not extend this 
idea of doing a good action to the members of a different 



422 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

tribe, and, whether his own tribe is or is not at war with the 
other tribe, he and his own community will think it no 
harm if he murders a member of that other tribe . But as 
the approach to civilization goes on — as man advances in 
intellectual power, and can trace the more remote conse- 
quences of his actions, and as he rejects baneful customs 
and superstitions, he begins to regard more and more not 
only the welfare but the happiness of his fellow-men. 
Habit, resulting from beneficial experiences, instruction 
and example, renders his sympathies more tender and 
widely diffused, until at last he extends them to men of 
all races, to the imbecile, maimed, and other useless mem- 
bers of society, and to the inferior animals. Thus the 
standard of morality rises higher and higher ; but its origin 
is in the social instincts, which spring out of the love of 
approbation and the fear of disapprobation.* 

But morality comprehends also the self-regarding vir- 
tues, those which directly affect the individual, and which 
affect society but remotely and incidentally. How did the 
idea of these originate ? There is a very wide difference 
between the morality of savages, in respect to the self- 
regarding virtues, and the morality of civilized nations. 
Among the former, the greatest intemperance, utter licen- 
tiousness, and unnatural crimes are very common. But as 
soon as marriage was introduced, whether monogamous or 
polygamous, jealousy led to the inculcation of female vir- 
tue ; and this, being honored, spread to the unmarried 
females. Chastity, the hatred of indecency, temperance, 
and many other self-regarding virtues, originating first in 
the social instincts, have come to be highly prized by civil- 
ized nations as affecting, first, the welfare of the commu- 
nity, and, secondly, the welfare of the individual. This was 
the origin of the so-called '^ moral sense." It rejects the 

* Darwin, " Descent of Man," Part I, chap. iv. 



SPENCER'S IDEA OF THE MORAL SENSE. 423 

intuitive theory of morality, and bases its origin on the in- 
creasing perception of the advantage of certain conduct to 
the community and the individual.* 

SoPHEREUS. And in this origin of the social and the 
seK-regarding virtues, which I understand you to say is the 
theory of Darwin, is the idea of a divine command to prac- 
tice certain things, and to avoid doing certain other things, 
left out ? 

KosMicos. The idea of a divine command, as the source 
of morality, is not necessary to the explanation of the mode 
in which the social or the self -regarding virtues were grad- 
ually developed. In the progress from barbarism to civili- 
zation, what is called the moral sense has been slowly devel- 
oped as an increasing perception of what is beneficial, and 
this has become an inherited faculty. We thus have a sure 
scientific basis for the moral intuitions which we do not in- 
dividually stay to analyze when we are called upon to deter- 
mine the morality or the immorality of certain actions. 
The supposed divine command is something that is aside 
from the process by which the idea of morality or immoral- 
ity became developed. 

SoPHEREUS. And is this also Mr. Spencer's philosophy 
of the moral sense ? 

KosMicos. Let me read you what Spencer says: "I 
believe that the experience of utility, organized and con- 
solidated through all past generations of the human race, 
has been producing corresponding modifications which, by 
continued transmission and accumulation, have become in 
us certain faculties of moral intuition — certain emotions 
responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no 
apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility." f 
I have emphasized certain words in this passage in order to 

* " Descent of Man," Part I, chap. iv. 

f Quoted in Darwin's " Descent of Man," p. 123. 



424: CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

make its meaning distinct. Mr. Spencer's theory is that 
we have certain faculties of moral intuition, which have 
become such by transmission and accumulation ; that the 
original ideas of right and wrong sprang from perceptions 
of utility ; and that when to the individual the question of 
a good or a bad action in others or himself is now pre- 
sented, he feels an emotion which responds to right or 
wrong conduct, and feels it in the faculty/ which he has 
inherited from ancestors, without referring it to his indi- 
vidual experience of the utility or inutility of certain con- 
duct. 

'Now, in regard to the divine command as the origin 
of our ideas of right and wrong, if you turn to Mr. Spen- 
cer's " Principles of Sociology," you will find an immense 
collection of evidence which shows the genesis of deities of 
all kinds. Beginning with the ideas formed by the primi- 
tive men of souls, ghosts, spirits, and demons, the ideas of 
another life and of another world, there came about the 
ideas of supernatural beings, aided in their development by 
ancestor-worship, idol-worship, fetich-worship, animal-wor- 
ship, plant-worship, and nature-worship. Hence came the 
ideas of deities of various kinds, one class of which is that 
of the human personality greatly disguised, and the other 
is the class which has arisen by simple idealization and ex- 
pansion of the human personality. The last class, although 
always coexisting with the other, at length becomes pre- 
dominant, and finally there is deyeloped the idea of one 
chief or supreme deity. Having traced the origin of this 
idea of a supreme deity, Mr. Spencer puts and answers 
this question: '* While among all races and all regions, 
from the earliest times down to the most recent, the con- 
ceptions of deities have been naturally evolved in the way 
shown, must we conclude that a small clan of the Semitic 
race had given to it, supernaturally, a conception which, 
though superficially like the rest, was in substance abso- 



IDEA OF THE HEBREW GOD. 425 

lately unlike them ? " * He then proceeds to show that 
the Hebrew Jeliovah, or God, was a conception that had 
a kindred genesis with all the other conceptions of a deity 
or deities. '^ Here," he says, " pursuing the methods of sci- 
ence, and disregarding foregone conclusions, we must deal 
with the Hebrew conception in the same manner as with 
all the others." Dealing with it by the scientific method, 
he shows that behind the supernatural being of the order 
of the Hebrew Grod, as behind the supernatural beings of 
all other orders, there has in every case been a human per- 
sonality. Thus, taking the narrative as it has come down 
to us of God's dealing with Abraham, he shows that what 
Abraham thought, or is described as thinking by those 
who preserved the tradition, was of a terrestrial ruler who 
could, like any other earthly potentate, make a covenant 
with him about land or anything else, or that he was the 
maker of all things, and that Abraham believed the earth 
and the heavens were produced by one who eats and drinks, 
and feels weary after walking. Upon either idea, Abra- 
ham's conception of a Deity remains identical with that 
of his modern Semitic representative, and with that of the 
uncivilized in general. But the ideas of Deity entertained 
by cultivated people, instead of being innate, arise only 
at a comparatively advanced stage, as results of accumu- 
lated knowledge, greater intellectual grasp, and higher 
sentiment, f 

To return now to the supposed divine command as the 
origin of morality, it is obvious that the conception of the 
being who has uttered the command makes the nature of 
the command partake of the attributes ascribed to that be- 
ing. Accordingly, the grossest superstitions, the most re- 
volting practices, the most immoral actions, have found 

* " Principles of Sociology," i, p. 433, § 202. 
f Ibid., chap, xxv, p. 414 et seq. 



426 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

their sanction in what the particular deity who is believed in 
is supposed to have inculcated or required. I do not need 
to enumerate to you the proofs of this, or to tell you that 
the Hebrew God is no exception to it. One illustration of 
it, however, is worth repeating. Speaking of the ceremony 
by which the covenant between God and Abraham is said 
to have been established, Mr. Spencer says : "Abraham and 
each of his male descendants, and each of his slaves, is cir- 
cumcised. The mark of the covenant, observe, is to be 
borne not only by Abraham and those of his blood, but also 
by those of other blood whom he has bought. The mark 
is a strange one, and the extension of it is a strange one, if 
we assume it to be imposed by the Creator of the universe, 
as a mark on a favored man and his descendants ; and on 
this assumption it is no less strange that the one transgres- 
sion for which every ' soul shall be cut off ' is, not any 
crime, but the neglect of this rite. But such a ceremony 
insisted on by a living potentate, under penalty of death, is 
not strange, for, as we shall hereafter see, circumcision is 
one of various mutilations imposed as marks on subject per- 
sons by terrestrial superiors." * 

So that the Hebrew God who made the covenant with 
Abraham was not, in Abraham's own concej^tion, the First 
Cause of all things, or a supernatural being, but he was a 
powerful human ruler, making an agreement with a shep- 
herd chief. In all religions, the things required or com- 
manded by the supposed deified person have been marked 
by the characteristics of human rulers ; and as a source of 
morality, or as a standard of morality, the requirements or 
commands of the deified person, however they are supposed 
to have been communicated, fail to answer the indispensa- 
ble condition of a fixed and innate system of morality, which 
is that it must have proceeded from the Creator of the 

* " Principles of Sociology," i, p. 135. 



SPENCER'S NATURAL ETHICS. 427 

uniyerse, and not from a being who partakes of human pas- 
sions, infirmities, and desires, and is merely a deified human 
potentate. 

. Pass, now, to Mr. Spencer's " Principles of Morality " ; 
and although but one volume of this work has been as yet 
published, we may see that he is entirely consistent with 
what he has said in his *' Sociology " and his other writings.* 
He does not leave us in any doubt as to his theory of morals. 
It appears, from the preface to his '^ Data of Ethics," that 
he has been compelled by ill-health to deviate from the 
plan which he had mapped out for himself, and to pub- 
lish one volume of his " Principles of Morality " before 
completing his ^* Principles of Sociology." But while we 
have reason for his sake and for the sake of the world to 
regret this, we can easily understand his system of morality. 
He means to rest the rules of right conduct on a scientific 
basis, and he shows that this is a pressing need. In his 
preface, he says : 

I am the more anxious to indicate in outline, if I can not com- 
plete, this final proof, because the establishment of rules of right 
conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that moral^ 
injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred 
origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative. Few 
things can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a 
regulative system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative 
system has grown up to replace it. Most of those who reject the 
current creed appear to assume that the controlling agency fur- 
nished by it may be safely thrown aside, and the vacancy left unfilled 
by any other controlling agency. Meanwhile, those who defend the 
current creed allege that, in the absence of the guidance it yields, no 
guidance can exist ; divine commandments they think the only pos- 
sible guides. Thus, between these extreme opponents there is a cer- 

* " Principles of Morality," vol. i. I. " The Data of Ethics." By 
Herbert Spencer. New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1884. 



428 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

tain community. The one holds that the gap left by disappearance 
of the code of supernatural ethics need not be filled by a code of 
natural ethics ; and the other holds that it can not be so filled. 
Both contemplate a vacuum, which the one wishes and the other 
fears. As the change which promises or threatens to bring about 
this state, desired or dreaded, is rapidly progressing, those who be- 
lieve that the vacuum can be filled are called upon to do something 
in pursuance of their belief 

The code of natural ethics wliich Mr. Spencer pro- 
pounds, and which is a product of the process of evolution, 
may be summarized as follows : Conduct is an aggregate of 
actions which are not purposeless, but which include all 
acts that are adjusted to ends, from the simplest to the 
most complex. The diyision or aspect of conduct with 
which ethics deals, the behavior we call good or bad, is a 
part of an organic whole ; but, although inextricably bound 
up with acts which are neither good nor bad, it is distin- 
guishable as comprehending those acts with which morality 
is concerned. The evolution of conduct, from the sim- 
plest and most indifferent actions up to those on which 
ethical judgments are passed, is what Mr. Spencer means 
by the scientific method of investigating the origin of mo- 
rality. We must begin with the conduct of all living creat- 
ures, because the complete comprehension of conduct is not 
to be obtained by contemplating the conduct of human be- 
ings only. "The conduct of the higher animals as com- 
pared with that of man, and the conduct of the lower ani- 
mals as compared with that of the higher, mainly differ in 
this, that the adjustments of acts to ends are relatively sim- 
ple and relatively incomplete. And as in other cases, so 
in this case, we must interpret the more developed by 
the less developed. Just as, fully to understand the part 
of conduct which ethics deals with, we must study hu- 
man conduct as a whole, so, fully to understand human 
conduct as a whole, we must study it as a part of that 



SPENCER'S THEORY OF CONDUCT. 429 

larger whole constituted by the conduct of animate beings 
in general. " * 

Begin, for example, with an infusorium swimming about 
at random, determined in its course not by an object which 
it perceives and which is to be pursued or escaped, but ap- 
parently by varying stimuli in its medium, the water. Its 
acts, unadjusted in any appreciable way to ends, lead it 
now into contact with some nutritive substance which it 
absorbs, and now into the neighborhood of some creature 
by which it is swallowed and digested. Pass on to another 
aquatic creature, which, although of a low type, is much 
higher than the infusorium, such as a rotifer. With larger 
size, more developed structures, and greater power of com- 
bining functions, there comes an advance in conduct. It 
preserves itself for a longer period by better adjusting its 
own actions, so that it is less dependent on the actions go- 
ing on around. Again, compare a low mollusk, such as a 
floating ascidian, with a high mollusk, such as a cephalo- 
pod, and it is apparent how greater organic evolution is 
accompanied by more evolved conduct. And if you pass 
then to the vertebrate animals, you see how, along with 
advance in structure and functions, there is evolved an ad- 
vance in conduct, until at length, when you reach the do- 
ings of the highest of mammals, mankind, you not only 
find that the adjustments of acts to ends are both more nu- 
merous and better than among the lower mammals, but you 
find the same thing on comparing the doings of the higher 
races of men with those of the lower races. There is a 
greater completeness of achievement by civilized men than 
by savages, and there is also an achievement of relatively 
numerous minor ends subserving major ends. 

Eecollecting, then, what conduct is — namely, the ad- 

* " The Data of Ethics," pp. 6, 7, by Herbert Spencer. New York : D. 
Appleton & Co., 1884. 



430 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

justment of acts to ends — and observing how this adjust- 
ment becomes more and more complete as the organism 
becomes more developed, we have to note the order of the 
ends to which the acts are adjusted. The first end, the 
first stage of evolving conduct, is the further prolongation 
of life. The next is that adjustment of acts to ends which 
furthers an increased amount of life. Thus far the ends 
are complete individual life. Then come those adjust- 
ments which have for their final purpose the life of the 
species. Then there is a third kind of conduct, which 
results from the fact that the multitudinous creatures 
which fill the earth can not live wholly apart from one 
another, but are more or less in presence of one another, 
are interfered with by one another. 'No one species can so 
act as to secure the greatest amount of life to its individu- 
als and the preservation of the species — can make a success- 
ful adjustment of its acts to these ends — without interfer- 
ing with the corresponding adjustments by other creatures 
of their acts to their ends. That some may live, others 
must die. Finally, when we contemplate those adjust- 
ments of acts to ends which miss completeness, because they 
can not be made by one creature without other creatures 
being prevented from making them, we reach the thought 
of adjustments such that each creature may make them 
without preventing them from being made by other creat- 
ures. Let me now quote Mr. Spencer's concrete illustra- 
tions of these abstract statements : 

'' Kecognizing men as the beings whose conduct is most 
evolved, let us ask under what conditions their conduct, in 
all three aspects of its evolution, reaches its limit. Clearly 
while the lives led are entirely predatory, as those of sav- 
ages, the adjustments of acts to ends fall short of this high- 
est form of conduct in every way. Individual life, ill car- 
ried on from hour to hour, is prematurely cut short ; the 
fostering of offspring often falls, and is incomplete when it 



ETHICAL CHARACTER OF ACTIONS. 431 

does not fail ; and in so far as tlie ends of self -maintenance 
and race-maintenance are met, they are met by destruction 
of other beings, of different kind, or of like kind. In 
social groups formed by compounding and recompounding 
primitive hordes, conduct remains imperfectly evolved in 
proportion as there continue antagonisms between the 
groups and antagonisms between members of the same 
group — two traits necessarily associated ; since the nature 
which prompts international aggression prompts aggression 
of individuals on one another. Hence, the limit of evolu- 
tion can be reached by conduct only in permanently peace- 
ful societies. That perfect adjustment of acts to ends in 
maintaining individual life and rearing new individuals, 
which is effected by each without hindering others from 
effecting like perfect adjustments, is, in its very definition, 
shown to constitute a kind of conduct that can be approached 
only as war decreases and dies out. 

''A gap in this outline must now be filled up. There 
remains a further advance not yet even hinted. For beyond 
so behaving that each achieves his ends without preventing 
others from achieving their ends, the members of a society 
may give mutual help in the achievement of ends. And if, 
either indirectly by industrial co-operation, or directly by 
volunteered aid, fellow-citizens can make easier for one 
another the adjustments of acts to ends, then their conduct 
assumes a still higher phase of evolution ; since whatever 
facilitates the making of adjustments by each, increases the 
totality of the adjustments made, and serves to render the 
lives of all more complete." 

In the outline which I have now given you of the evolu- 
tion of conduct, you will perceive the foundation of Spencer's 
system of ethics. Actions begin to assume an ethical char- 
acter — conduct becomes good or bad — when the acts tend to 
promote or to prevent the general well-being of the commu- 
nity. But how is the perception or recognition of this qual- 



432 OKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

ity in an action reached ? What is the determining reason 
for considering an action good or bad ? Obyiously, conduct 
is considered by us as good or bad according as its aggregate 
results to self, or others, or both, are pleasurable or painful. 
Mr. Spencer shows that every other proposed standard of 
conduct derives its authority from this standard: '^No 
school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desir- 
able state of feeling called by whatever name — gratification, 
enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure somewhere, at some time, 
to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the 
conception. It is as much a necessary form of moral in- 
tuition as space is a necessary form of intellectual intui- 
tion."* 

On this fundamental basis, Mr. Spencer rests his system 
of absolute ethics and relative ethics. Eelative ethics are 
those by which, allowing for the friction of an incomplete 
life and the imperfections of existing natures, we may ascer- 
tain with approximate correctness what is the relatively 
right. This is often exceedingly difficult, because two cases 
are rarely the same in all their circumstances. But abso- 
lute ethics are the ideal ethical truths, expressing the abso- 
lutely right. Such a system of ideal ethical truths, which 
must have precedence over relative ethics, is reached only 
when there has been, in conformity with the laws of evolu- 
tion in general, and in conformity with the laws of organi- 
zation in particular, an adaptation of humanity to the social 
state, changing it in the direction of an ideal congruity. 
But, as in relative ethics, the production of happiness or 
pleasure is the aim, however imperfectly accomplished, so 
in the ideal state the aim is the same, the difference being 
that in the latter the accomplishment of happiness or pleas- 
ure and the exclusion or prevention of pain are complete. 

* " The Data of Ethics," pp. 45, 46, by Herbert Spencer. New York : 
D. Appleton & Co., 1884. 



SPENCER'S NEGATIONS. 433 

SoPHEEEUS. And do I understand you that in this sys- 
tem of ethics the idea of a moral law proceeding from and 
consisting of the command of a Supreme Lawgiver is left 
out? 

KosMicos. Certainly it is. Did I not just now read to 
you from Mr. Spencer's preface his complete rejection of 
the supposed sacred origin of moral injunctions, and what 
he says of the necessity for the secularization of morals to 
take the place of that system which is losing its authority ? 

SoPHEEEUS. And this philosopher is the same writer 
who negatives the idea of any creation of organic life, and 
who also negatives the idea that the human mind is an ex- 
istence of a spiritual nature, owing its existence to a Cre- 
ator ? 

KosMicos. Undoubtedly ; we have gone over all that 
ground. 

SoPHEEEUS. And he is the same philosopher who de- 
nies the existence of a Supreme Being, Creator, and Gov- 
ernor of the universe ? 

KosMicos. Perhaps you may call it denial, although 
what he maintains is that we know, and can know, nothing 
on the subject of a personal God. 

SoPHEEEUs. Very well. I will reflect upon all this 
until we meet again. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Mr. Spencer's philosophy as a whole — His psychology, and his system of 
ethics — The sacred origin of moral injunctions, and the secularization 
of morals. 

A CERTAIN honesty and directness of mind prevent 
Sophereus from being bewildered by the Spencerian philoso- 
phy. Before his next meeting with the scientist, he has 
reviewed the main features of this philosophy as developed 
in Mr. Spencer^s published works ; and he has taken notice 
of the warning which Mr. Spencer has given to his readers 
in the preface to his "Data of Ethics," that "there will 
probably be singled out for reprobation from this volume, 
doctrines which, taken by themselves, may readily be made 
to seem utterly wrong." There is not much likelihood that 
Sophereus will be able, if he is willing, to avail himself of 
this "opportunity for misrepresentation" in a discussion 
with such a champion of Mr. Spencer's philosophy as the 
scientist who explains and defends it, especially as they 
have the works before them to refer to. Being thus respect- 
ively equipped for the discussion, the conference between 
them proceeds : 

Sophereus. Before I give you my convictions respecting 
Mr. Spencer's philosophy as a whole, I wish to say some- 
thing about the passage which you read from the preface 
to his "Data of Ethics," because it is the key to his ethical 
system. In the first place, to what does he refer when he 
speaks of " the current creed" ? When I undertake to in- 
vestigate a system of morality, the only " creed " that I care 



"THE CURRENT CREED." 435 

about — the only one that is of any importance — is that 
which accepts, as a matter of belief, the existence of the 
Creator and Supreme Governor of the universe, from whose 
infinite will and purposes have proceeded certain moral as 
well as physical laws. This, I take it, is the ^^ creed" of 
which Mr. Spencer speaks ; the one which assigns moral 
injunctions to the will of a Supreme Lawgiver as ^' their 
supposed sacred origin." It is to this creed that he opposes 
his "secularization of morals," which must take the place 
of their supposed sacred origin, because the authority of 
the latter is rapidly dying out of the world. It is this 
"creed" which is rejected by those who "assume that the 
controlling agency furnished by it may be safely thrown 
aside, and the vacancy left unfilled by any other agency." 

Undoubtedly there are and always have been numerous 
persons who appear practically to think that the sacred 
origin of morality can be safely rejected, and that the va- 
cancy may be left unfilled by any other restraining agency. 
The deliberate and willful murderer, the burglar, the adult- 
erer, and many of the other criminal classes, not only ap- 
pear to reject "the current creed," but they would be very 
glad to have it assumed that there is no other restraining 
agency to take its place. So, too, there are persons who 
break no moral law, whose lives are pure, but who, having 
theoretically persuaded themselves that there is no sacred 
origin of moral injunctions, omit to provide, for themselves 
or others, any other controlling agency to fill the vacuum. 
But this latter class is not very numerous ; and if, without 
meaning any offense to them, their number is added to that 
of the criminal classes, to make up the aggregate of those 
who reject "the current creed," we have not a very large 
body compared with the whole body of persons in civilized 
communities who adhere to "the current creed," who live 
by it, and who think that others should live by it too, as 
the ultimate foundation of those social laws which take 
20 



436 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

cognizance of men's conduct toward one another. So fcliat 
I do not quite understand the assertion that '^ moral in- 
junctions are losing the authority given by their supposed 
sacred origin " ; connected as it is with the other assertion 
that society is ^^ rapidly progressing" to that vacuum which 
is to follow the complete rejection of the one guide without 
the substitution of another in its place. I am quite aware 
that there has been of late years an increasing amount of 
what is called infidelity, or unbelief, or atheism. But I 
am quite sure that there has not been a general theoretical 
or practical rejection of so much of the religious creed of 
mankind as assigns to the will of a supreme and super- 
natural lawgiver certain moral injunctions. If we confine 
our view to Christendom alone, it is certain that the growth, 
activity, and influence of the various religious bodies are not 
materially checked, and that religious beliefs are not by any 
means losing their hold upon great multitudes of people. 
If we survey the regions where the Mohammedan faith pre- 
vails, the same general result is found, whatever Christians 
may think of the beliefs or practices of that vast body of 
the human race. And, even when we penetrate among the 
races which are less civilized, we find very few races or 
tribes in which there does not prevail some idea of some 
kind of command proceeding from some deity or other, 
whatever we may think of the character of that deity or of 
the nature of the command. 

But I presume that Mr. Spencer meant to confine his :• 
assertion of the necessity for a secularization of morals, and 
his assumption that their sacred origin is rapidly passing 
away from men's beliefs, to the state of society as it exists 
now in Western civilization ; and my observation of this 
portion of the world is, that those who reject what I pre- 
sume he means by ^^the current creed" are, first, a class 
of theorizers ; and, secondly, the criminal classes ; and that 
the aggregate of the two is not, after all, so formidable that 



BASIS OF LEGISLATION. 437 

we ouglit to conclude that the regulative system of the 
sacred origin of moral injunctions is "no longer fit" for 
any practical purpose. I do not, therefore, recognize what 
he considers the supreme practical necessity for "the secu- 
larization of morals " to take the place of a system which 
is worn out. 

KosMicos. You have left out of the case a very impor- 
tant element. Mr. Spencer antagonizes those who reject 
the current creed against those who defend it. The for- 
mer, while they reject the current creed, do not recognize 
the necessity for any other controlling agency. The latter, 
while they defend the current creed, maintain that noth- 
ing can take its place as a regulating agency. Between 
them they create a vacuum, which one class wishes for 
and the other fears. This is the vacuum which he says 
can be and must be filled by the secularization of morals. 
It is a vacuum in philosophical speculation about the origin 
of morality, and, when the conclusion is reached, it becomes 
a practical and pressing question how it is to be carried out. 
^ SoPHEKEUS. Precisely ; and, when the conclusion is 
reached, it is to be carried out in legislation and govern- 
ment, or else the conduct of men toward one another in 
society is not to be regulated by public authority at all, but 
is to be left to each man's perception of what will produce 
the greatest amount of pleasure and happiness, or the least 
amount of pain and misery. Now, it is pretty important to 
settle at the outset whether those who defend the current 
creed are right or wrong when they say that nothing which 
will answer the same purpose can be found to take its place. 
They constitute one of the classes who will be responsible 
for the supposed vacuum ; and their share in that vacuum, 
their contribution to it, if I may use such an expression, 
consists in their assertion that nothing of any value can 
take the place of the sacred origin of moral injunctions. 
The practical test of whether they are right or wrong is to 



438 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

be found in legislation. Let us suppose, then, a legislative 
assembly in which there is a proposal to change the law of 
murder, or to do away with it altogether. A member who 
does not believe in any sacred origin of the command 
" Thou shalt do no murder," moves not only to abolish the 
death-penalty, but to abolish all legal definition of the 
crime, and leave every man to be restrained by the con- 
sciousness that, if he takes the life of another, he will cause 
a great deal of pain and misery to the relations and friends 
of that person. The mover argues that "the current 
creed " of morality is worn out ; is " no longer fit," as a 
regulator ; and that the safest and best regulator is the per- 
ception of the beneficial effects of actions of kindness and 
good-will, and of the disastrous effects of cruelty and malice. 
He is answered by one who defends the current creed, and 
who maintains that, as human nature is constituted, the 
utilitarian system of morals can not take the place of the 
sacred origin as the ultimate foundation of social relations. 
But the majority of the assembly think that the mover of 
the proposition has the best of the argument, and they pro- 
ceed to " secularize" morals by passing his bill doing away 
with the law of murder altogether. I am not obliged to 
extend my travels anywhere, where I do not care to go, 
and I confess I should not like to visit that country after it 
had thus " secularized " morality. Jj 

KosMicos. ISTow just be careful 40 note that this whole 
science of conduct — the science of ethics — the foundation 
of right and wrong, is a product of evolution. As in the 
development of organisms the higher and more elaborate 
are reached after a great length of time, as in mechanics 
knowledge of the empirical sort evolves into mechanical 
science by first omitting all qualifying circumstances and 
generalizing in absolute ways the fundamental laws of 
forces, so empirical ethics evolve into rational ethics by first 
neglecting all complicating incidents and formulating the 



UTILITAKIAN SYSTEM OF ETHICS. 439 

laws of right action apart from the obscuring effects of 
special conditions. There are thus reached, after a great 
lapse of time, those ideal ethical truths which express the 
absolutely right. Mr. Spencer treats of the ideal man 
among ideal men ; the ideal man existing in the ideal social 
state. "On the evolution hypothesis," he says, '^the two 
presuppose one another ; and only when they coexist can 
there exist that ideal conduct which absolute ethics has to 
formulate, and which relatiye ethics has to take as the 
standard by which to estimate divergences from right, or 
degrees of wrong."* But, again, observe that society is 
now in a transition state ; the ultimate man has not yet 
been reached ; the evolution of ethics is, however, going 
on, retarded as it may be by various frictions arising from 
imperfect natures. But there is in progress an adaptation 
of humanity to the social state, and the ultimate man will 
be one in whom this process has gone so far as to produce 
a correspondence between all the promptings of his nature 
and all the requirements of his life, as carried on in society ; 
so that there is an ideal code of conduct formulating the 
behavior of the completely adapted man in the completely 
evolved society, f 

SoPHEREUS. But I understand that we have already 
reached, or are very soon to reach, a condition of things in 
which the supposed sacred origin of moral injunctions is 
now, or very shortly will become, no guide. We are to fill 
the vacuum which is caused, or is about to be caused, by 
its disappearance, by substituting as the standard of right 
and wrong the perceptions which we can have of the ef- 
fects of actions upon the sum total of happiness, because 
this will be the sole standard in the ideal state of society 
in which the ideal man will ultimately find himself. I 
will not insist on the total depravity of man's nature, 

* " Data of Ethics," chap. xv. f Ibid. 



440 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

because I never borrow an argument from theologians. 
But it has been one of the conclusions that I haye drawn 
from some study of human nature, that it requires yery 
strong restraints. Not only must some of the restraints 
be of the strongest kind, but they must be simple, posi- 
tive, and adapted to the varying dispositions and intel- 
ligence of men. There can not well be imagined any 
restraining moral force so efficacious as that which is de- 
rived from a belief that the Creator of the universe has 
ordained some moral laws ; has specialized certain conduct 
as right and certain conduct as wrong, without regard to 
varying circumstances. As the foundation of all that part 
of legislation that takes cognizance of the simpler relations 
of men to one another — those relations which are always 
the same — the sacred origin of moral injunctions is of far 
greater force than the perception of the greatest-happiness 
principle can possibly be. If a man is tempted to commit 
murder, is he not far more likely to be restrained by a law 
which he knows will punish him without regard to the 
misery he would cause to the friends and relatives of the 
person whom he is tempted to kill, than he would be if the 
law were based on the latter consideration alone ^Do away 
with all legislation which punishes the simpler crimes first 
and foremost because they break the laws of God, and sub- 
stitute as the restraining agency individual recognition of 
the effect of actions upon the sum total of happiness, and 
you would soon see that one of two consequences would 
follow : either you would have no criminal code at all, or 
it would be one that would be governed by the most fluctu- 
ating and uncertain standards. ) Moreover, how is the tran- 
sition from the sacred source of the simpler moral injunc- 
tions to the secularization of morals to be effected ? I once 
heard a wise person say that if a thing is to be done, an in- 
genious man ought to be able to show how it is to be done. 
I suppose the secularization of morals means the complete 



FADING AWAY OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 441 

renoYation of our ideas of right and wrong, by taking as 
the sole standard the pleasure or pain, the happiness or un- 
happiness, which actions will produce. How are you going 
to reach this ideal state ? The vacuum is rapidly coming 
about. How are you going to take the first step in filling 
it ? Before the yacuum is complete, you must do some- 
thing. You have waited until the evolution of conduct of 
the purely utilitarian type has made some gi-eat advances ; 
but the ideal state is not yet reached by all men. You wish 
to hasten its approach, and you must begin to act. There 
is nothing for you to do but to formulate the new moral 
code and put it in operation. You must make your laws 
— if you continue to have laws — so that murder and lying 
and theft will not be punished because the Almighty has 
prohibited them, but they will be punished simply because 
they produce misery. Do you think you would ever see 
every individual of such a community brought to an ideal 
congruity between all the promptings of his nature and all 
the requirements of his life, as carried on in society ? That 
you would have nothing but " the completely adapted man 
in the completely evolved society " ? I fancy that you 
would often have to fall back upon the sacred origin of 
moral injunctions, and to punish some conduct because it 
breaks a law of divine authority. I may have been too 
much in the habit of looking at things practically ; but I 
have not yet discovered that the feeling of obligation, the 
sense of duty, what is recognized as moral obligation, hav- 
ing its origin in some command, and enforced by some kind 
of compulsion, can be dispensed with. 

KosMicos. I must refer you to Mr. Spencer's explana- 
tion of the fact that the sense of duty or moral obligation 
fades away as the moral motive emerges from all the politi- 
cal, religious, and social motives, and frees itself from the 
consciousness of subordination to some external agency. 
He does not shrink from the conclusion because it will be 



442 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

startling. He tells us that it will be to most very startling 
to be informed that ^Hhe sense of duty or moral obligation 
is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralization in- 
creases." He fortifies his position thus : 

Startling though it is, this conclusion may be satisfactorily de- 
fended. Even now progress toward the implied ultimate state is 
traceable. The observation is not infrequent that persistence in 
performing a duty ends in making it a pleasure, and this amounts 
to the admission that, while at first the motive contains an element 
of coercion, at last this element of coercion dies out, and the act is 
performed without any consciousness of being obliged to perform 
it. The contrast between the youth on whom diligence is enjoined, 
and the man of business so absorbed in affairs that he can not be in- 
duced to relax, shows us how the doing of work, originally under 
the consciousness that it ought to be done, may eventually cease to 
have any such accompanying consciousness. Sometimes, indeed, 
the relation comes to be reversed ; and the man of business persists in 
work from pure love of it when told that he ought not. Nor is it 
thus with self-regard ing feelings only. That the maintaining and 
protecting of wife by husband often result solely from feelings di- 
rectly gratified by these actions, without any thought of must; and 
that the fostering of children by parents is in many cases made an 
absorbing occupation without any coercive feeling of ought ; are 
obvious truths which show us that even now, with some of the 
fundamental other-regarding duties, the sense of obligation has 
retreated into the background of the mind. And it is in some de- 
gree so with other-regarding duties of a higher kind. Conscien- 
tiousness has in many outgrown that stage in which the sense of a 
compelling power is Joined- with rectitude of action. The truly 
honest man, here and there to be found, is not only without thought 
of legal, rehgious, or social compulsion, when he discharges an 
equitable claim on him ; but he is without thought of self-compul- 
sion. He does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction 
in doing it; and is, indeed, impatient if anything prevents him 
from having the satisfaction of doing it. 

Evidently, then, with complete adaptation to the social state, 
that element in the moral consciousness which is expressed by the 
word obligation will disappear. The higher actions required for 



CHRISTIAIT ETHICS. 443 

the harmonious carrying on of life will be as much matters of coursd 
as are those lower actions which the simple desires prompt. In their 
proper times and places and proportions, the moral sentiments will 
guide men just as spontaneously and adequately as now do the sen- 
sations. And though, joined with their regulating influence when 
this is called for, will exist latent ideas of the evils which non-con- 
formity would bring, these will occupy the mind no more than do 
ideas of the evils of starvation at the time when a healthy appetite 
is being satisfied by a meal. 

SoPHEREUS. There is a religion in the world called Chris- 
tianity, with which we are tolerably familiar. It compre- 
hends a system of morality which, when completely observed, 
develops the truly good man, the man who does the right 
thing with a feeling of satisfaction in doing it, and brings 
about those higher actions which are required for the har- 
monious carrying on of life, as matters of course, just as surely 
as the same result can be brought about by the most ideal 
secularization of morals that any philosophical theories can 
accomplish. Whatever may be the evidences by which the 
sacred origin of Christianity is supposed to be established, 
it is certain that this religion does not omit, but on the 
contrary it presupposes and asserts, as the foundation of 
its moral code, that the sense of obligation to which it 
appeals is the consciousness of obligation to obey divine 
commands. It proceeds upon the idea that human nature 
stands in need of some coercion ; that the sense of obliga- 
tion is not to be allowed to retreat into the background of 
the mind, but that a sense of the compelling power must 
be kept joined with rectitude of action, otherwise there 
will be a failure of rectitude. /\i is considered, I believe, 
that the adaptation of the Cnristian morality to the whole 
nature of man, by means of the compelling power, the 
consciousness of which is not to be transitory, but is to be 
universal and perpetual, is very strong proof that this re- 
ligion came from a being who understood human nature 



444 CKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

better than we can understand it. Howeyer this may be, 
it is, at all events, certain that the scheme of Christian 
morality proceeds upon the necessity for a more efficacious 
regulator of human conduct than the simple feeling of sat- 
isfaction in doing right, or the feeling of dissatisfaction in 
doing wrong ; and, although the true Christian is, in com- 
pleteness of moral character, like Mr. Spencer's ideal man, 
and although a society completely Christian would be that 
ideal social state in which there would be perfect congruity 
between the lives of men and the welfare of that society, 
yet the Christian religion, if I understand it rightly, does 
not assume that there will be more than an approximation 
to that universal state of perfection while the human race 
remains on earth. / The proof of this is to be found in the 
fact that this religion does not contemplate a time when 
divine command is to cease as the restraining agency on 
earth ; but, on the contrary, it appears to assume that obe- 
dience to the divine will is to continue in another life to be 
a perpetual motive, as it has been in this life. All this 
may be without such proof as '' science " demands, but it 
is certain that the scheme of Christian morality is based 
upon the idea that the Creator has made obedience to his 
laws, because they are his laws, the great regulator of 
human conduct. If the Creator had so made men that 
the consciousness of the effect of conduct on the happi- 
ness or misery of our fellow-men would be sufficient as a 
regulator, it is rational to conclude that he would not 
have imposed commands which were to be obeyed because 
they are commands. However great may be the approxi- 
mation to a complete adaptation of the social state, I 
do not look forward to the disappearance of that element 
in the moral consciousness which is expressed by the word 
obligation, because obligation, in its ultimate sense, is 
obedience to a higher power. Obedience for its own 
sake, obedience because there is a command, irrespect- 



THE LAW OF OBEDEEiTOE. ' 445 

ive of all the reasons for the command, is a law which is 
illustrated in very many of the relations of life. A wise 
parent will sometimes explain to his child why he com- 
mands some things and prohibits others ; but if he means 
to train that child in the way he should go, he will some- 
times require him to obey for the mere purpose of teaching 
him that obedience without question or inquiry is a law of 
his nature. A master of a yessel, which is in peril at sea, 
gives an order to the sailors. They may or may not under- 
stand the reasons for it. But what sort of sailors would 
they be if they did not act upon the consciousness that 
unquestioning obedience is the law of their relation to the 
ship ? 

In the earliest traditions that we have of the human 
race, as those traditions are accepted by the Western na- 
tions, we find a pretty striking and very simple instance of 
this law of obedience. The first pair of human beings are 
placed in a garden Where they are at liberty to eat of the 
fruit of every tree save one, but of that one their Creator 
absolutely forbids them to partake. He assigns to them no 
reason for the prohibition, but he lays upon them his abso- 
lute command, on the penalty of death if they are disobe- 
dient. One of them begins to reason about the matter — an 
allegorical creature or being, called the serpent, tempting 
her with certain advantages that she will get from eating 
this particular fruit. She yields, disobeys, and persuades 
her husband to do the same. The consequences follow, as 
their Creator told them they would. The law of obedience 
which this story illustrates has been in operation through 
all the ages, and society can no more dispense with it than 
it can dispense with any of the physical laws that govern 
the universe. 

KosMicos. Are you going back to the fables for the sa- 
cred origin of moral injunctions ? I thought you had got 
beyond that. 



446 OREATIO:^' OR EYOLUTION? 

SoPHEKEUS. I use an illustration wherever I find it. I 
am perfectly content that you should call the story of Adam 
and Eve a fable, but the law of obedience which it illus- 
trates is a tremendous fact. The incident, fable or no 
fable, is eminently human, and it is occurring every day in 
human experience. It is not strange that the first Hebrew 
tradition should have been one that illustrates in so simple 
a manner the existence of the law of obedience. In like 
manner, it is not strange that the Christian system of ethics 
should have been based on the existence of this same law of 
obedience to commands. This Christian system of ethics 
has dispensed with a great many minute observances which 
one branch of the Semitic race believed were imposed upon 
them as commands by their Creator ; but it has not dis- 
placed the law of obedience, or dispensed with certain moral 
injunctions as divine commands, for it proceeds upon the 
great truth that human nature requires that kind of re- 
straint, and that there are certain actions which can not be 
left without it. 

KosMicos. Mr. Spencer has anticipated you. Your ref- 
erence to Christianity is not happy. Having gone through 
with the explanation of the evolution process in the devel- 
opment of the highest conception of morals, and having 
shown that what now characterizes the exceptionally highest 
natures will eventually characterize all, he has something 
to say about the reception of his conclusions, to which, as 
you have referred to the Christian system of morals, you 
would do well to attend : 

§ 98. That these conclusions will meet with any considerable ac- 
ceptance is improbable. Neither with current ideas nor with cur- 
rent sentiments are they sufficiently congruous. 

Such a view will not be agreeable to those who lament the 
spreading disbelief in eternal damnation, nor to those who follow 
the apostle of brute force in thinking that because the rule of the 
strong hand was once good it is good for all time; nor to those 



"EATIONALIZED VERSION" OF ETHICS. 447 

whose reverence for one who told them to pnt up the sword is shown 
by using the sword to spread his doctrine among heathens. From 
the ten thousand priests of the religion of love, who are silent when 
the nation is moved by the religion of hate, will come no sign of 
assent ; nor from their bishops who, far from urging the extreme 
precept of the Master they pretend to follow, to turn the other cheek 
when one is smitten, vote for acting on the principle — strike lest ye 
be struck. Nor will any approval be felt by legislators who, after 
praying to be forgiven their trespasses as they forgive the trespasses 
of others, forthwith decide to attack those who have not trespassed 
against them; and who, after a Queen's speech has invoked "the 
blessing of Almighty God " on their councils, immediately provide 
means for committing political burglary. 

But though men who profess Christianity and practice paganism 
can feel no sympathy with such a view, there are some, classed as 
antagonists to the current creed, who may not think it absurd to 
believe that a rationalized version of its ethical principles will event- 
ually be acted upon. 

SoPHEEEUS. " Our withers are un wrung." I am not a 
believer in eternal damnation ; I am not an apostle of brute 
force ; I am not in favor of using the sword to spread a re- 
ligion of love ; I am not a priest or a bishop, nor am I a 
member of Parliament or of any other legislative body. I 
am a simple inquirer, endeavoring to ascertain the sound- 
ness of certain systems of philosophy. If there are men 
who profess Christianity and practice paganism, I do not 
see that this fact should deter me from estimating the na- 
ture of the Christian religion, as I would endeavor to esti- 
mate the character of any other religion. It is no concern 
of mine whether men who profess Christianity and practice 
paganism can feel any sympathy with Mr. Spencer's views. 
The question for me is whether / can feel any sympathy 
with his views. I will, therefore, go on to tell you why I 
do not believe that a merely "rationalized version" of the 
ethical principles of Christianity will take the place of those 
divine injunctions on which the ethics of Christianity are 



M8 CREATIOJ^ OR EVOLUTION? 

primarily based. Observe, now, that I do not enter upon 
the proofs of the divine authority or the divine nature of 
Christ. I point to nothing but the fact that the Christian 
ethics presuppose a divine and superhuman origin of moral 
injunctions. About the fact that they presuppose and as- 
sume the sacred origin of moral injunctions, there can be 
no controversy. We read that the question was put to 
Jesus, " What commandment is first of all ? " and the an- 
swer was, '^ The first is, Hear, Israel ; the Lord our God, 
the Lord is one ; and thou shalt love thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. The 
second is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
There is none other commandment greater than these."* 
The person who made this answer may or may not have 
been a divinely commissioned teacher, but, whatever he was, 
the question that was put to him was a very searching one, 
and both question and answer assume two things : first, that 
there is a being, man, to whom commands are addressed ; 
secondly, that there is a being, God, by whom commands 
are given. Jesus undertakes to inform those who ques- 
tioned him, what are the two commandments than which 
there are none greater addressed to human beings ; and in 
this answer he covers the existence of man as one being and 
the existence of God as another being. In any scheme of 
philosophy which ignores the existence of these two beings 
— ignores the existence of man as a being capable of receiv- 
ing and acting upon a command, and the existence of a 
being capable of addressing a command to man — there must 
necessarily be a great defect ; not because Jesus, a supposed 
divinely commissioned teacher, assumed that there are two 
such beings, but because "vfithout the hypothesis of their 
existence there can be no ethical system whatever. The 
crucial test of the soundness of Mr. Spencer's philosophy 

* Revised version of St. Mark's gospel. 



SPEl^CER'S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. 449 

is, therefore, whether he negatives the existence of man and 
the existence of God. 

Undoubtedly, there is a certain kind of consistency and 
completeness in Mr. Spencer's whole philosophy. Begin- 
ning with biology, he traces all organized life back to the 
original molecules of organizable matter, and he makes man, 
in his physical structure, a product of successive modifica- 
tions of organisms out of one another, by simple generation. 
This ignores the Creator as a being specially fashioning 
the human animal, which Mr. Spencer thinks is a concep- 
tion too grossly anthropomorphic to stand the slightest sci- 
entific scrutiny. He then takes up what he calls *^ psy- 
chology," and deals with what he considers the origin and 
nature of the human mind. He makes consciousness to 
consist in tracts of feeling in the nervous organization. He 
denies that mind is an entity, a being, perceiving and recog- 
nizing ideas suggested by the impressions produced upon 
the nervous organization by external objects. According 
to his psychological system, there is no ego, no person, no 
thinking being, behind the sensations and feelings in the 
nerve-center, and to whom the nerve-center suggests ideas. 
Rejecting the hypothesis of such a being, Mr. Spencer 
treats of the composition of mind ; and he makes it consist, 
not in a being, but in components of feelings produced by 
the molecular changes of which nerve-corpuscles are the 
seats, and the molecular changes transmitted through fibers. 
He does not regard the ultimate fabric of mind as a thing 
admitting of any inquiry. He says that its proximate com- 
ponents can be investigated, and that these are feelings and 
the relations between feelings. This '^method of compo- 
sition remains the same throughout the entire composition 
of mind, from the formation of its simplest feelings up to 
the formation of those immense and complex aggregates 
of feelings which characterize its highest development." 
Here, then, we must stop. We are not to conceive of mind 



450 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

as an organized entity, or as an organism ; or as a some- 
thing in which certain powers inhere, and which affords a 
field for their action. We may talk of a '^ thread of con- 
sciousness," meaning aggregates of feelings produced by 
successiye waves of molecular change in the nerve-corpus- 
cles, but we may not talk of ^^consciousness" as perception 
by a conscious subject. We may talk of feelings, but not 
of a subject that feels. Mind, then, is not an existence 
apart from physical organization. Its phenomena are prod- 
ucts of our corporeal organization. Man is not a person ; 
and, if he is not, how he is to have a sense of obligation, 
bow there is to be any intuitional idea of right and wrong, 
in the sense of a command or an injunction addressed by 
one being to another, I do not understand. Mr. Spencer 
does not help me to understand this, and obviously he does 
not intend to, because he denies it absolutely. His system 
of ethics plainly ignores it ; and to that I now pass. 

He makes conduct consist in the adjustment of actions 
to ends. Good conduct is when the actions are adjusted 
to the ends of producing all the pleasure and happiness 
that they can be made to bring about. Bad conduct is 
when the actions produce only pain or misery to some one, 
or there is not a proper adjustment of them to the end of 
happiness. Beginning, as you described it in our last con- 
ference, with the lowest orders of animals, the conduct of 
man is the same adjustment of actions to ends that it is in 
them ; the difference being, in the case of man, that as an 
animal he has a greater and more varied power of complete 
adjustment of his actions to wider and more comprehensive 
ends than any other animal. These wider and more com- 
prehensive ends consist in the full accomplishment of hap- 
piness and pleasure to other beings. This, according to 
Mr. Spencer, is impliedly admitted by those who assert the 
sacred origin of moral injunctions ; for, when pressed for 
the reason why moral injunctions have been given, all mor- 



SACRED INJUNCTIONS INDISPENSABLE. 451 

alists, he says, admit that the ultimate moral aim is a de- 
sirable state of feeling, gratification, enjoyment, happiness 
to some being or beings. /That the welfare of society is one 
of the moral aims which moral injunctions of the sacred 
order were designed to accomplish, so far as special in- 
junctions are believed to have been given, is plain enough. 
But that this congruity between the divine commands and 
the happiness of others — the useful effect of such commands 
— comprehends the whole purpose of such commands, is the 
ultimate and sole reason for their being given, so far as they 
are believed to have been given, may be disproved without 
difficulty. For example, an individual may be an utterly 
worthless person, a curse to his relatives and friends and to 
society, irreclaimably sunk in vice and misery, a mere cum- 
berer of the ground. To kill him will produce no unhap- 
piness to any one, but will be a positive relief and benefit. 
According to ^'the current creed," there stands a sacred 
injunction, " Thou shalt do i^o murder." This is accepted 
as an. absolute, fixed, eternal canon of the divine will. You 
are not to take upon yourself individually to determine, by 
any standard of utility applied to a particular case, that you 
can rightfully kill a human being. J A miser is alone in the 
world. I can steal his hoarded gold, and apply it to good 
objects. There stands the command, "Thou shalt not 
steal." Eor no purpose, for no object whatever, for no end 
whatever, shall you commit a theft. " Society," to borrow 
a phrase of one of the strongest men of our time, "would go 
all to pieces in an hour " if it were to adopt only the utili- 
tarian standard of morality, and to reject the sacred origin 
of moral injunctions.* The reception of that sacred origin 
— the belief in it — implies that man is a being capable of 
receiving and obeying a divine command. The existence 

* The late Jeremiah S. Black is the person whose language is here 
quoted, although it was used with reference to something else. 



452 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

of such a being is negatived by Mr. Spencer's psychological 
system. That he equally negatives the existence of God as 
a being capable of giving, and who has given, moral in- 
junctions to man, is apparent throughout his whole scheme 
of philosophy. According to that philosophy, there is 
nothing in the universe but an Omnipotent Power, which 
underlies all manifestations. To ascribe a personality to 
that Power is a relic of the primitive beliefs of barbarians, 
and it is one that is rapidly dying out of the conceptions of 
educated men. 

There is, therefore, no room in Mr. Spencer's philoso- 
phy for any moral intuitions, such as are implied in the 
hypothesis that man was placed under an obligation to 
obey his Creator, and made capable of recognizing that 
obligation. I can perceive no other ultimate foundation 
for a system of ethics. As to the idea that we can make a 
system of ethics which is to relegate to individual judg- 
ment the adaptability of actions to produce complete happi- 
ness, and to have no other standard of right and wrong, 
we might as well at once act upon the maxim that the 
end justifies the means, and leave every man to determine 
that the end is a good one ; and, therefore, the action is 
good. 

KosMicos. How do you justify the death-penalty which 
is inflicted by society ? Have you any justification for it, 
excepting the claim that it is a useful restraint ? 

SoPHEREUS. When society acts judicially in the punish- 
ment of crime, it inflicts such punishments as experience 
shows will prevent, or tend to prevent, others from com- 
mitting that crime. Its authority to punish with death 
or some other penalty is founded, primarily, in regard to 
the simpler crimes, such as murder, theft, adultery, false 
testimony, etc., on the divine prohibition, which a belief 
in the sacred origin of certain special moral injunctions 
leads it to accept ; and, secondly, on the general welfare 



MIND NOT AN EXISTENCE. 453 

of mankind.* Eliminate from tlie ethical code all belief 
in the sacred origin of moral injunctions, and confine the 
judicial action of society to the merely utilitarian effect of 
individual conduct, and you will surrender the whole crimi- 
nal code to the doctrine that the individual who does a cer- 
tain act is to be punished or not to be punished, according 
to the effect of his act on the person or persons who are 
immediately or remotely affected by it. It is because of 
Mr. Spencer's negation of man's intuitive sense of obliga- 
tion to obey divine commands, because of his peculiar sys- 
tem of '^psychology," that I can not accept the system to 
which he gives the name of "ethics." He ought to have 
invented a new term for his science of mind. ''^ Psycholo- 
gy," according to its derivation, and as it is used in the 
English language, means discourse or treatise on the human 
soul, or the doctrine of man's spiritual nature. If he has 
no spiritual nature, no soul, what does this philosopher 
mean by entitling his work " The Principles of Psycholo- 
gy " ? It seems to me that in this use of a term which im- 
plies something that he labors to show does not exist, he is 
not quite consistent, for he certainly does not mean to admit 
that man has a soul, in the sense in which the learned world 
have generally used the term '^ psychology." But, not to 
stickle for verbal criticisms, I will endeavor to give you my 
conception of his '^ scientific " analysis of the mind, and to 
contrast it with the other analysis, which seems to me to be 
better supported. 

KosMicos. Take care that you do not misrepresent him. 

SoPHEREUS. I shall take the utmost care to represent 
him in the only sense in which I can understand him ; and, 
if I do not represent him accurately, you will correct me. 



* This does not imply that the punishment inflicted by society is to be 
always the same. It implies only that there is to be some punishment, so 
long as the prohibited act continues to be committed. 



4:64: CEEATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

Take, in the first place, tlie following passage, in which he 
defines the only ego that has any existence : 

That the ego is something more than the passing group of feel- 
ings and ideas is true or untrue according to the degree of compre- 
hension we give to the word. It is true if we include the body and 
its functions ; but it is untrue if we include only what is given in 
consciousness. 

Physically considered, the ego is the entire organism, including 
its nervous system ; and the nature of this ego is predetermined : 
the infant had no more to do with the structure of its brain than 
with the color of its eyes. Further, the ego, considered physically, 
includes all the functions carried on by these structures when 
supplied with the requisite materials. These functions have for 
their net result to liberate from the food, etc., certain latent 
forces. And that distribution of these forces shown by the activi- 
ties of the organism, is from moment to moment caused partly by 
the existing arrangement of its parts and partly by the environing 
conditions. 

The physical structures thus pervaded by the forces thus ob- 
tained, constitute that substantial ego which lies behind and deter- 
mines those ever-changing states of consciousness we call mind. 
And while this substantial ego, unknowable in ultimate nature, is 
phenomenally known to us under its statical form as the organism, 
it is phenomenally known under its dynamical form as the energy 
diffusing itself through the organism, and, among other parts, 
through the nervous system. Given the external stimuli, and the 
nervous changes with their correlative mental states depend partly 
on the nervous structures and partly on the amount of this diffused 
energy, each of which factors is determined by causes not in con- 
sciousness but beneath consciousness. The aggregate of feelings 
and ideas constituting the mental /, have not in themselves the 
principle of cohesion holding them together as a whole ; but the / 
which continually survives as the subject of these changing states 
is that portion of the Unknowable Power which is statically con- 
ditioned in special nervous structures pervaded by a dynamically- 
conditioned portion of the Unknowable Power called energy.* 

* " Principles of Psychology," vol. i, pp. 503, 504, § 220. 



THE BODY THE ONLY EGO. 455 

It is now necessary to translate this ; and in translating 
it, it is necessary to attend to the meaning of words. Let 
us begin with the first proposition comprehended in this 
statement : '' That the ego is something more than the 
passing gronp of feelings and ideas, is true or untrue ac- 
cording to the degree of comprehensiveness we give to the 
word . It is true if we include the body and its functions ; 
but it is untrue if we include only what is given in con- 
sciousness." The natural antithesis would have been to 
contrast what i^ included in the iody with what is included 
in the mind. But as he does not admit that the mind is 
an existence, as there is nothing but a passing group of 
feelings and ideas, not a person who perceives feelings and 
has ideas, he speaks of what is given in consciousness, con- 
sciousness being nothing but that passing group, an ever- 
changing series, never the same, and never laid hold of and 
appropriated by a conscious subject. We do, indeed, call 
these ever-changing states of consciousness mind, but this 
is a misnomer, if we mean it in the sense of a being. 
What is to be considered, therefore, when the analysis 
seeks to ascertain the real and only ego, is the body and its 
functions, and the passing group of feelings and ideas 
which is given in consciousness. 

Let us pass on : The body is the physical structure 
and its functions. It is pervaded by the forces which its 
functions liberate from the latent condition in which they 
exist in food and other environment. This physical struct- 
ure, thus pervaded by certain forces, is the substantial ego 
which lies behind and determines the ever-changing states 
of consciousness which we call mind. There is no other 
ego than the body. It is phenomenally known to us under 
its statical form as the organism ; that is to say, when the 
body is contemplated as an organism which is not acting, 
or as a mere structure. But it is phenomenally known to 
us also under its dynamical form, which is when the energy 



456 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

deriyed from the pervading forces is diffusing itself through 
the organism. Statical,* I understand, refers to a body at 
rest, or in equilibrium, not acting ; dynamical refers to 
bodies in motion, or acted on by force, in movement. The 
human body is phenomenally known to us in both of these 
conditions or states. When it is in the dynamical state, 
that is, when it is acted on by external stimuli, there will 
be nervous changes ; these nervous changes have correla- 
tive mental states, which depend partly on the nervous 
structure and partly on the amount of the diffused energy 
which pervades the organism. But these two factors, the 
nervous changes and the diffused energy, are each deter- 
mined by causes that are not in consciousness, but beneath 
consciousness. This I understand to mean that when there 
are nervous changes from a state of rest or non-action, pro- 
duced by external stimuli, and a certain amount of diffused 
energy pervades the organism, there will be correlative 
mental states, which are determined by factors that are not 
in consciousness but beneath consciousness. Conscious- 
ness, therefore, is not a perception by a conscious subject, 
or a consciousness of a self experienced by a being, but it 
is a passing group of feelings and ideas, which have no co- 
hesion, are never the same, but are ever-changing succes- 
sions of impressions produced in the ]3hysical organism. 

I come now to the summary and conclusion of the 
whole matter as expressed in the last sentence of the para- 
graph which I have read. There is a mental I, but it is 
not a person, an existence, an independent ego. It is con- 
stituted of an aggregate of feelings and ideas, which have 
not in themselves a principle of cohesion that holds them 



* Statical : pertaining to bodies at rest or in equilibrium. 
Dynamical : pertaining to strength or power. 

Dynamics : that part of mechanical philosophy which treats of bodies 
in motion ; opposed to statics. ('* Webster's Dictionary.") 



MR. SPENCER'S PROOFS. 457 

together as a whole. They are merely passing groups of 
feelings and ideas which are never the same, but which 
succeed one another without connection or cohesion. 
There is an I which continually surviyes as the subject 
of these changing states, but it is that portion of the Un- 
knowable Power which is statically conditioned in special 
nervous structures pervaded by a dynamically conditioned 
portion of the Unknowable Power called energy. 

So. that each individual of the human race is to be con- 
templated, not as a dual existence, composed of a body and 
a mind, united for a certain period, but as a subject which 
is continuously undergoing certain physical changes by the 
action through it of a portion of the energy exerted by the 
Unknowable Power. The Unknowable Power pulsates 
through my bodily organism a certain portion of its 
energy, and that of which continuous existence can alone 
be predicated is this portion of the Unknowable Power 
which is statically conditioned in my nervous structure, 
pervaded by a dynamically conditioned portion of that Un- 
known Power. 

I trust, now, it will not be said that I misrei3resent Mr. 
Spencer when I assert that he ignores, denies, and en- 
deavors to disprove the existence of the mind of man as a 
spiritual entity, capable of surviving his body. Have you 
any fault to find with my paraphrase of the passage on 
which I have commented ? 

KosMicos. You have paraphrased that passage fairly 
enough, but you ought to attend to the proof which he 
adduces in support of his position in the subsequent pas- 
sage to which he refers you in the one that you have 
quoted. Let me read it : 

•§ 469. And now, before closing the chapter, let me parenthetically 
remark on a striking parallelism between the conception of the Ob- 
ject thus built up, and that which we shall find to be the proper 
conception of the Subject. For just in the same way that the Ob- 



458 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

ject is tlie unknown permanent nexus which is never itself a phe- 
nomenon, but is that which holds phenomena together ; so is the 
Subject the unknown permanent nexus which is never itself a state 
of consciousness, but which holds states of consciousness together. 
Limiting himself to self- analysis, the Subject can never learn any- 
thing about this nexus, further than that it forms part of the nexus 
to that peculiar vivid aggregate he distinguishes as his body. If, 
however, he makes a vicarious examination, the facts of nervous 
structure and function, as exhibited in other bodies like his own, 
enable him to see how, for each changing cluster of ideas, there ex- 
ists a permanent nexus which, in a sense, corresponds to the perma- 
nent nexus holding together the changing cluster of appearances 
referable to the external body. 

Eor, as shown in earlier parts of this work, an idea is the psychi- 
cal side of what on its physical side is an involved set of molecular 
changes propagated through an involved set of nervous plexuses. 
Tiiat which makes possible this idea is the pre-existence of these 
plexuses, so organized that a wave of molecular motion diffused 
through them will produce, as its psychical correlative, the compo- 
nents of the conception, in due order and degree. This idea lasts 
while the waves of molecular motion last, ceasing when they cease; 
but that which remains is the set of plexuses. These constitute 
the potentiality of the idea, and make possible future ideas like it. 
Each such set of plexuses, perpetually modified in detail by per- 
petual new actions ; capable of entering into countless combinations 
with others, just as the objects thought of entered into countless 
combinations ; and capable of having its several parts variously ex- 
cited, just as the external object presents its combined attributes in 
various ways — is thus the permanent internal nexus for ideas, an- 
swering to the permanent external nexus for phenomena. And 
just as the external nexus is that which continues to exist amid 
transitory appearances, so the internal nexus is that which continues 
to exist amid transitory ideas. The ideas have no more a continued 
existence than we have found the impressions to have. They are 
like the successive chords and cadences brought out from a piano, 
which successively die away as other ones are sounded. And it 
would be as proper to say that these passing chords and cadences 
thereafter exist in the piano, as it is proper to say that passing ideas 
thereafter exist in the brain. In the one case, as in the other, the 



MR. SPENCER'S PROOES. 459 

actual existence is the structure which, under like cooditions, again 
evolves like combinations. 

It is true that we seem to have somewhere within us these sets of 
faint states answering to sets of vivid states which once occurred. 
It is true that in common life ideas are spoken of as being treasured 
up, forming a store of knowledge ; the implied notion being that 
they are duly arranged and, as it were, pigeon-holed for future use. 
It is true that in psychological explanations, ideas are often referred 
to as thus having a continued existence. It is true that our forms 
of expression are such as to make this implication unavoidable; 
and that in many places throughout this work the phrases used ap- 
parently countenance it ; though, I believe, they are always trans- 
formable into their scientific equivalents, as above expressed. But 
here, as in metaphysical discussions at large, where our express ob- 
ject is to make a final analysis, and to disentangle facts from hypoth- 
eses, it behooves us to recognize the truth that this popular concep- 
tion, habitually adopted into psychological and metaphysical discus- 
sions, is not simply gratuitous, but absolutely at variance with 
experience. All which introspection shows us is that under certain 
conditions there occurs a state of consciousness more or less like 
that which previously occurred under more or less like conditions, 
Not only are we without proof that during the interval this state of 
consciousness existed under some form ; but, so far as observation 
reaches, it gives positive evidence to the contrary. For the new state 
is never the same — is never more than an approximate likeness of 
that which went before. It has not that identity of structure 
which it would have were it a pre-existing thing presentiiig itself 
afresh. JSTay, more ; even during its presence its identity of struct- 
ure iB.not preserved — it is not literally the same for two seconds to- 
gether. No idea, even of the most familiar object, preserves its 
stability while in consciousness. To carry further the foregoing 
simile, its temporary existence is like that of a continuously-sounded 
chord, of which the components severally vary from instant to in- 
stant in pitch and loudness. Quite apart, however, from any inter- 
pretation of ideas as not substantive things but psychical changes, 
corresponding to physical changes wrought in a physical structure, 
it suflSces to insist upon the obvious truth that the existence in the 
Subject of any other ideas than those which are passing, is pure 
hypothesis absolutely without any evidence whatever. 
21 



460 CREATION OK EYOLUTIOX? 

And here we come upon yet another phase of that contradiction 
which the anti-realistic conception everywhere presents. For set- 
ting out from the data embodied in the popular speech, which as- 
serts both the continued existence of ideas and the continued exist- 
ence of objects, it accepts the fiction as a fact, and on the strength 
of it tries to show that the fact is a fiction. Continued existence 
being claimed for that which has it not, is thereupon denied to that 
which has it.* 

SoPHEEEUS. The writings of Mr. Spencer, more than 
those of any other person of equal reputation that I have 
met with, require close examination in order to test the 
soundness of his propositions and assertions. Such a pas- 
sage as the one which you have now quoted appears, on a 
first reading, to he quite plausible. When it is read care- 
fully two or three times, and analyzed, it is found to be 
untenable in its reasoning, and largely made up of dogmatic 
assumptions. I shall now give you my reasons for this 
criticism. In the first place, let us go through the passage 
and fix the meanings of words. '^JSTexus," although not a 
term adopted into the English language, means, I presume, 
bond or ligament. ^^ Plexus" is a word that we find in 
English dictionaries as a scientific term, and it means a 
union of yessels, nerves, or fibers, in the form of net- work, f 
Taking along these meanings, we find that the subject, the 
only thing of which a subjective existence can be predi- 
cated, is the ligament which holds states of consciousness 
together, and this permanent ligament is unknown. It is 
not itself a state of consciousness, but it is the bond which 
holds states of consciousness together. These states of con- 
sciousness are the ideas which are passing in the subject, 
which are never the same, which are not a permanent pos- 
session, and therefore there is in the subject no other ex- 
istence than the passing ideas of the moment. Ideas, then, 

* "Principles of Psychology," vol. ii, p. 484, et seq. 
\ " Webster's Dictionary." Plexus. 



"SCIENTIFIC EQUIVALENTS" FOR YOU AND ME. 461 

are not substantive things, but psychical changes, corre- 
sponding to physical changes wrought in a physical struct- 
ure. The proof which is supposed to make this a tenable 
hypothesis consists of, first, what can be learned by self- 
analysis, or by my introspection of myself ; next by vicarious 
examination, or by observing the facts of nervous structure 
and function exhibited in other bodies like my own. These 
examinations enable us to discover, what ? Not a conscious 
person, learning, appropriating, and holding ideas, but that 
there exists only, for each changing cluster of ideas, a per- 
manent nexus, corresponding to the permanent nexus which 
holds together the changing cluster of appearances referable 
to the external body. We next have the assertion that 
ideas have no more a continued existence than the impres- 
sions made in the external body. Both are transitory, and 
in both the only continued existence is the nexus, or liga- 
ment which binds together the changing impressions and 
the changing clusters of ideas. This Mr. Spencer illus- 
trates by the successive chords and cadences brought out 
from a piano. These have no existence in the piano, which 
is nothing but a mechanical structure, giving forth sounds, 
when they are struck, which sounds are merely passing 
chords and cadences ; and he concludes that it would be 
just as proper to say that the passing chords and cadences, 
after they have died away, exist in the piano, as it is to 
say that passing ideas, after the nervous impressions have 
ceased, exist in the brain. Let us now go back and exam- 
ine this kind of psychology in detail. Mr. Spencer speaks 
of self-analysis, and of the analysis of other minds and 
bodies like our own. He uses the terms self, others, me, 
mine, him, his. Who or what is this thing which examines 
himself or another? Who and what are ^'you" or "I," 
who sit here talking to each other ? Are these mere forms 
of expression, always transformable into their scientific 
equivalents ? What is the scientific equivalent for he, his, 



462 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

me, mine, you, yours ? Mr. Spencer says that, under cer- 
tain conditions, there occurs a state of consciousness more 
or less like other states of consciousness that haye existed 
before, but that the only permanent thing is the nexus 
which holds these states of consciousness together. His 
illustration of the piano fails. If the piano were a struct- 
ure that could of its own volition give forth such sounds as 
it chose to utter, it might be correct to speak of it as an 
existence haying a store of sounds which it could make 
reach our ears when and as it saw fit. But it does not 
happen to be an automatic machine. It is a mere collec- 
tion of strings, of different sizes and tensions, which, when 
struck by an instrument called a hammer, cause certain 
yibrations in the air. But a human being is an automatic 
organism ; one that can at pleasure giye utterance to ideas 
through the yocal organs, so that they are communicated 
to you. When I giye utterance to an idea, through my 
yocal organs, in speaking to you, do I draw on a stock of 
permanent ideas, some of which I express, or do I express 
nothing but a passing state of consciousness, more or less 
like other states of consciousness that haye before passed 
through my neryous organization ? Mr. Spencer asserts 
that the notion of the continued existence of ideas is abso- 
lutely at yariance with experience. On the contrary, expe- 
rience proyes it eyery moment of our liyes. 

For example : Years ago a person related to me a fact 
yery interesting and important to me, but I haye not until 
now had occasion to make use of it. I haye a perfect recol- 
lection of what he told me. It bears no resemblance to any 
other fact of which I eyer heard. It concerns me alone. 
I haye a perfect recollection of it. I stored it up for future 
use wheneyer I should need to use it. Is it a self-delusion 
that I haye stored up and treasured this information ? 
When I recollect and rej)eat it, just as it was told me, am 
I doing nothing but giving expression to a passing idea. 



CONTINUITY OF IDEAS. 463 

more or less like the original idea ? This would be a rather 
dangerous doctrine to adopt as the interpretation of expe- 
rience. Human testimony respecting things that we have 
been told, or have seen, would be a pretty uncertain reli- 
ance if the memory had no other power than to assimilate 
a passing idea, more or less, to a former state of conscious- 
ness which more or less resembled the present consciousness. 
Men deviate from the truth rather frequently, now ; but, 
teach them that memory is nothing but the assimilation, 
more or less, of a passing idea to some other idea that for- 
merly passed through their heads, and I should be rather 
afraid of their testimony, I should fear that the '^psycho- 
logical changes " would be a little too frequent, and that the 
story would not have 'Hhat identity of structure which it 
would have were it a pre-existing thing presenting itself 
afresh." 

What is all the learning of the scholar ? Has he treas- 
ured up nothing ? Has he nothing in the pigeon-holes of 
his mind ? Has he no mind in which to store his acquisi- 
tions ? Is the sole actual existence " the structure which, 
under like conditions, again evolves like combinations " ? 
Must he find himself under like conditions which will again 
evolve like combinations of ideas in passing trains of con- 
sciousness, before he can bring forth from the store-house 
of his mind the pre-existing thing that lies within it ? 

KosMicos. I must here interject a question in my turn. 
What is the proof that ideas have a continued existence ? 
Speaking of the brain as the nerve-center, in which impres- 
sions are produced by molecular changes transmitted along 
the nerve-fibers, what proof is there that an idea which is 
now passing through the brain continues to exist there, any 
more than the passing chord or cadence continues to exist 
in the piano ? 

SoPHEREUS. Do you not see that the very power of dis- 
crimination which we possess, whereby we distinguish be- 



464 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

tween present and former conditions, and present and for- 
mer combinations, proves that there is a permanent existing 
thing in an idea which presents itself afresh, and with 
which we compare the passing idea, so as to determine 
whether they are the same ? If we did not possess this 
power, all thinking, all expression of ideas, all memory, ail 
that part of consciousness which is not made up of mere 
bodily feelings and sensations, would be nothing but the 
repetition of the passing idea ; and all learning, informa- 
tion, knowledge, and experience, would be utterly useless. 
If there did not exist something with which to compare the 
passing idea of the present moment, we should be always 
floating on the surface of the passing idea. There would 
be no continuity in our intellectual existence. We should 
be reduced to the condition of the piano, and could only 
give forth such chords and cadences as are produced by 
successive blows of the hammer upon the strings of the in- 
strument. And how could anything originate in ourselves ? 
What is the faculty which produces ideas that are not only 
new to ourselves, not only not suggested by passing ideas, 
but new to all other human intellects, and never embraced 
in their experience until we put them within their appre- 
hension ? What did Dante do when he produced the " In- 
ferno " ? or Milton, when he composed the ^' Paradise Lost" ? 
or Shakespeare, when he composed his '^Hamlet"? or 
Goethe, when he produced his " Faust " ? Does the poet, 
when he gives us ideas that we never possessed before, origi- 
nate nothing ? If he is a maker, a creator, in the realm of 
ideas, are those original ideas, which neither he nor any 
one else ever had before, the mere result of like combina- 
tions evolved out of like conditions, when neither the old 
conditions nor the combinations have anything to do with 
the new ideas which he has produced ? Surely, in reference 
to the great productions of human genius, we must con- 
template the mind as an existence, having the power to do 



ORIGINATING NEW IDEAS. 465 

something more than to produce the transitory ideas that 
are passing through the brain from the impressions on 
it, communicated through the nervous structure. Surely 
there is some other structure than that which can be 
likened to the piano. Surely there is something more than 
a set of plexuses ** which constitute the potentiality of an 
idea, and make possible future ideas like it " ; for there are 
possible future ideas which are not like any former ideas, 
which do not depend on any set of plexuses, and do not 
cease to be possible when the waves of molecular motion 
cease. These possible future ideas are the conceptions 
which the mind originates in itself ; which are unlike any- 
thing that has gone before, or that is passing now. So that 
there are two kinds of ideas : the kind that has a continued 
existence, and that consists in knowledge, and is drawn 
upon by memory ; and the other, the kind of which con- 
tinued existence is not to be predicated until it has been 
formulated by the faculty of original production, not pro- 
duced by an exercise of memory, but produced by original 
creation. 

KosMicos. Has not Mr. Spencer allowed for and ac- 
counted for all that you claim as the power of originating 
new ideas ? Does he not say that '' each set of plexuses " — 
each set of the net-work of ideas — is " perpetually modified 
in detail by perpetual new actions " ; is " capable of enter- 
ing into countless combinations with others, just as the 
objects thought of entered into countless combinations ; 
and capable of having its several parts variously excited, 
just as the external object presents its combined attributes 
in various ways " ? Is not this the whole matter, in regard 
to what you call the power of originating new ideas ? 

SoPHEREUS. No, it is not. In the first' place, I do not 
believe that he was here intentionally speaking of any ideas 
but those which are suggested by, or involve external ob- 
jects. But, if he did mean to include the production of 



^QQ CREATI02T OR EVOLUTION? 

new and original ideas througli the countless combinations 
into which old ones may be made to enter, his theory does 
not fit the case of poetical invention of new ideas, or the 
invention of imaginary characters, or lives ; for these are 
creations which are not mere combinations of old ideas, and 
the more they depart from everything suggested by, or re- 
sembling, former ideas, the more we are obliged to recog- 
nize as a faculty of the mind the power to originate and 
formulate new ideas that did not previously exist. 

KosMicos. Well, you have criticised Mr. Spencer's 
mental philosophy from your point of view. !N"ow let me 
hear your hypothesis of the origin and nature of mind, with 
which you promised to contrast his psychology, and which 
you think is better supported. 

Sqphereus. I think I had better put my views in writ- 
ing, and read them to you at our next meeting. You can 
then have them before you to examine at your leisure. Let 
me say in advance, however, that I shall not rely on any of 
the metaphysicians, but shall endeavor to give you my con- 
ception of the nature of mind from my own reflections, and 
from common experience. I shall make my examination 
of the nature of mind precede any suggestion of its probable 
origin, just as I think we should examine the structure of 
any organism before we undertake to deduce its probable 
origin. 



Here, then, closes the debate between these two persons, 
from whom, at the end of the next chapter, I shall part 
with a reluctance which I hope the reader will share. Not 
for victory do I allow Sophereus to explain his analysis of 
mind, without describing how his scientific friend receives 
it. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

Sophereus discourses on the Nature and Origin of the Euman Mind. 

SoPHEREUS, in fulfillment of his intention expressed at 
their last meeting, reads to the scientist the following 

DISCOURSE ON THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN 

MIND. 

I regard the mind as an organism, capable of anatomi- 
cal examination, as the body is, but of course by very dif- 
ferent means. In the anatomical examination of an animal 
organism we use our eye-sight to acquire a knowledge of its 
component parts, its organs, and its structure, by dissec- 
tion of a dead or inspection of a living subject. But, in 
studying the anatomy of mind, we have a subject that is 
beyond our visual perception. It is not, however, beyond 
our examination. We carry on that examination by means 
of the introspection which consciousness enables us to have 
of our own minds, and by observing and comparing the 
phenomena of mind as manifested in other persons. If 
these respective means of investigation enable us to reach 
the conviction that in each individual of the human race 
there is an existence of a spiritual nature and another exist- 
ence of a corporeal or physical nature, we shall have at- 
tained this conclusion by observing the difference between 
the two organisms. The fact that we can not detect the 
bond that unites them while they are united should not 
lead us to doubt their distinct existence as organisms of 



468 CREATION OE EVOLUTION? 

different natures, but made for a temporary period to act 
on and with each other. 

Before entering further into the subject, I will refer to 
some of the terms which we are obliged to use in speaking 
of the nature of mind as an organism, when contrasted 
with the nature of the physical organism. We speak, for 
example, and from the want of another term we are obliged 
to speak, of the substance of mind. But, while we thus 
speak of mind in a term of matter, there is no implication 
that the subject of which we speak is of the same nature as 
that which constitutes the physical organism ; nor is there 
any danger of the incorporation of materialistic ideas with 
our ideas of the fabric of mind. On the contrary, the yery 
nature of the- inquiry is whether that which constitutes 
mind is something different from that which constitutes 
body ; and, although in speaking of both we use the term 
substance, we mean in the one case organized matter, and 
in the other case organized spirit. There is a yery notable 
instance of a corresponding use of terms in the passage of 
one of St. Paul's epistles, where he discourses on the doc- 
trine of the resurrection. According to my uniyersal cus- 
tom when I refer to any of the writings regarded by the 
Christian world as sacred, or inspired, I lay aside altogether 
the idea of a person speaking by divine or any other au- 
thority. I cite the statement of St. Paul, in its philo- 
sophical aspect, 'as an instance of the use of the term body 
applied to each of the distinct organisms. His statement, 
or assertion, or assumption — call it what you please — is, "If 
there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body " ; * 
he uses the term body in speaking of that which is natural, 
or of the earth, earthy, and of that which is spiritual, or 
heavenly. Without following him into the nature of the 
occurrence which he affirms is to take place in the resurrec- 
tion, the question is whether he was or was not philosophi- 

* Corinthians, revised version. 



THE NATUEAL AND THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 469 

cally correct, in speaking of two kinds of organisms, one 
composed of matter, and liable to corruption and dissolu- 
tion, and the other composed of spirit, indestructible and 
imperishable. 

In order to be understood, he was obliged to use the 
term hody in reference to both of these organisms, just as 
we are obliged to use the term siclstance when we speak of 
the subject of contemplation as a physical or as a spiritual 
organism. Can this distinctness of nature be predicated of 
the body and the mind of man before what we call death ? 

The peculiar occurrence which St. Paul so vigorously 
and yividly describes as what is to happen at the resurrec- 
tion, is a prophecy in which he mingles with great force 
philosophical illustrations and the information which he 
claims to have receiyed from inspiration ; or things revealed 
to him by the Almighty through the Holy Spirit. He 
expresses himself in terms level to the apprehension of 
those whom he is addressing ; and in this use of terms he 
does just what we do when we speak of a natural body and 
a spiritual body. He puts the existence of the natural 
body hypothetically : 

"i/* there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual 
body." * Paraphrased as the whole passage may be, he 
says, "You well know that there is a natural body, and I 
tell you that there is also a spiritual body. " Laying aside 
the mode in which the spiritual body is to 'be manifested at 
and after the resurrection, we have to consider whether, 
during this life, there is a bodily organism and a mental 
organism, distinct in their natures, but united for a time 
by a bond which is hidden from our detection. 

* In the " authorized " version the passage is rendered thus : " There is 
a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." Sophereus quotes the late 
revised version. The meaning is the same. St. Paul assumes the exist- 
ence of a natural body, and then asserts that there is likewise a spiritual 
body. 



470 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

I have used the term anatomy of the mind, from the 
same necessity which compels me to speak of the substance 
of mind. You will understand that, when I speak of ana- 
tomical examination of the mind, I mean that analysis 
of its structure which we can make by the use of the ap- 
propriate means, and which enables us to conceiye that it 
is an organized structure of a peculiar character. 

The grand difficulty with Mr. Spencer's ^* Psychology " 
is, that after he has made what he calls " the proximate 
components of mind " to consist of " two broadly contrasted 
kinds — feelings and the relations between feelings," which 
are mere impressions produced on the nerve-center by 
molecular changes in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of 
the nerves, he has not approached to a solution of the ques- 
tion whether there is or is not a something to which these 
feelings and the relations between them suggest ideas, and 
which holds ideas continuously for future use. 

Thus he makes consciousness to consist in passing 
groups of feelings and their relations, and not in a conscious 
subject. He denies that there is any ego, in the sense in 
which every person is conscious of a self, and maintains that 
the only substantive existence is the unknown ligament 
which holds together the ever-changing states of feelings 
and impressions produced in the nerve-center. There is a 
far better method of investigation. It is to inquire into the 
fabric of the mind as an organism, by determining whether 
mental phenomena justify us in the conclusion that it is an 
organism. In this way we may reach a satisfactory con- 
clusion that the mind is a substantive existence, possessing 
a uniform structure, of a character, however, fundamentally 
different from the bodily structure ; and in this way we 
may be able to explain, wholly or in part, how the mind 
and the body act on and with each other so long as the 
connection is maintained. 

I am entirely free to acknowledge that, when I speak 



MENTAL ANATOMY. 471 

of the substance of mind, or speak of it as an organism, I 
am and must remain ignorant of the nature of its substance 
beyond the point where its self -manifestations cease. But 
the question is, whether we are not under an irresistible 
necessity of adopting as a postulate the existence of a some- 
thing which has certain inherent powers, and whether the 
mental phenomena, the self-manifestations of those powers, 
do not necessarily lead us to the conception and conviction 
that mind is a substantiye existence. I can not talk or 
think of consciousness apart from a conscious subject, or 
of feelings without a subject that feels. A thread of con- 
sciousness, or a series of feelings, conveys no meaning to 
me, apart from a being who has the consciousness and per- 
ceives the feelings.* 

One very important question to be considered in all such 
investigations is, Whether our experience does not teach 

* I have met, by the kindness of the author, with a little treatise which 
contains a great deal of sound mental philosophy, with which in the main I 
concur, and to which I am indebted for some very valuable suggestions. 
This modest little book is entitled " The Heart of Man : An Attempt in Men- 
tal Anatomy." The author is Mr. P. P. Bishop, a resident of San Mateo, 
in Florida. It was printed at Chicago, by Shepard & Johnson, for the 
author, in 1883. I know not if it is on sale. I suppose that Mr. Bishop 
was led to send me his interesting treatise by the publication, in the " Man- 
hattan Magazine," at New York, in 1884, of the substance of the first 
three chapters of the present work. I take this opportunity of expressing 
my high appreciation of his treatise, and of explaining the meaning of its 
title. As I understand him, he uses the term " Heart of Man " as synony- 
mous with structure of the mind, and not as referring to what is figuratively 
called " the human heart." He has explained " Mental Anatomy " as fol- 
lows : " The method of investigation, which I have employed in making my 
way to the conclusions set forth in this discussion, I call ' The Anatomical 
Method,' because it is based on the conception of mind as an organized 
being, and aims to discover the structure of that being." . . . "At the risk," 
he adds, " of appearing egotistical, I think it best to relate an experience." 
He did not need to deprecate the appearance of egotism, for his method of 
investigation, based on his own mental experience, was the very best that he 



472 CREATIOI^ OR EVOLUTION? 

us that we are mentally so constituted that certain concep- 
tions are necessary to us ? Our mental nature is placed 
under certain laws, as our physical or corporeal nature is 
placed under certain other laws. One of these necessary 
conceptions, which are imposed on us, as it seems to me, 
by a law of our mental constitution, is a conception of the 
fundamental difference between matter and spirit. In what 
way is it forced upon us that there is a natural world and 
a spiritual world ? The phenomena of matter and the phe- 
nomena of mind are essentially different. In ourselves they 
occur in conjunction, and they occur in disjunction. They 
are manifested synchronously, and they are manifested 
separately in point of time. The normal action of all the 
functions of the body is not necessary to the action of the 
mind/ The body may be prostrated by disease, and the 
moment of its death may be at hand ; yet the mind, to the 
last moment of the physical life, may be unclouded, and 
its manifestations may be as perfect as they ever were in the 
full health and actiyity of the vital functions of the body. J 
]N"o one who stands at a death-bed where this phenomenon 
occurs, and observes how completely the mind is master of 
itself ; how it holds in consciousness the past and the pres- 
ent ; how it essays to grasp the future for those whom it 
is to leave and for itself, can easily escape the conviction 
that death is nothing but the dissolution of the bond which 
has hitherto held together the two existences that consti- 
tuted the human being, one of which is to be dissolved into 
its elemental and material substances, and the other of 
which is to go elsewhere, intact and indestructible. 

could have followed. It were to be wished that we could have more of this 
kind of self -analysis by persons competent to make it, and less of theoreti- 
cal reasoning from premises more or less arbitrarily assumed. 

I have endeavored to make my imaginary philosopher, Sophereus, avoid 
the method of reasoning which I thus condemn, and to keep him within the 
bounds of experience. 



PHENOMENA OF COMPOSITION. 473 

Let me now refer to what is taking place while I am 
writing this essay. I have said that the phenomena of our 
bodily organism and the phenomena of our mental organ- 
ism may occur synchronously in the same individual. The 
act of writing an original composition is an instance of this. 
The action of certain organs of the body and the action of 
the mind are simultaneous. In time, they can not be sep- 
arated. In themselves, they are separable and separate. 
The thought springing up in the mind may be retained 
there, or may flow into language and be written by the hand 
upon the page. f'No one can detect in himself any instant 
of time when the mental formation of a sentence, or any 
clause of a sentence, as he writes, is separable from the 
physical act of writing. In that not very common, but still 
possible, feat of dictating to two amanuenses, at what ap- 
pears to be the same time, on two distinct subjects, there 
is undoubtedly an appreciable interval, in which the mind 
passes from one subject to the other, and then back again, 
with great rapidity. But, when one is one's own aman- 
uensis, when the act of thinking and formulating the 
thought, and the act of writing it down in words, is per- 
formed by the same person, there is a simultaneous action 
of that which originates the thought and clothes it in words, 
and the act of the bodily organ which inscribes the words 
upon paper. How is this phenomenon to be explained ? 
And to what does it lead ? Is there anything in the whole 
range of Mr. Spencer's " Psychology " that will interpret 
this familiar experience ? May it not be interpreted by 
an anatomical examination of the mind as an organism ?y 

I do not now refer to cases where a thought is complete- 
ly formulated before the pen begins to be moved over the 
paper, and is then recalled by an effort of the memory and 
written down. I am referring to what I suppose is the 
habit of many persons in writing, namely, the origination 
and formulation of the thought as the hand moves the pen, 



4:74 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

a habit of which most practiced writers are perfectly con- 
scious. The same thing occurs in what is truly called ex- 
temporaneous speaking,* when oral discourse is not a mere 
repetition, rnemoriter, of thoughts and sentences which had 
been previously formulated, but, as the word extemporane- 
ous implies, when the thought and the language flow from 
the Yocal organs eo instanti with their conception. In 
these and the similar cases of improvisation and animated 
conversation, in which there is a synchronous action of the 
mind and the bodily organs, it would be impossible for us 
to have that action if mind were constituted as Mr. Spencer 
supposes it to be. /if there were no mind in the sense of 
an organized entity, conceiving a thought and clothing it 
in the language needful to give it written or oral expression, 
*Mf the ego were nothing more than the passing group of 
feelings and ideas" — if an *'idea lasts (only) while the 
nerves of molecular motion last, ceasing when they cease " 
— ^if that which remains is (only) the " set of plexuses " — 
how could we originate any new thought ? JThe very illus- 
tration to which Mr. Spencer resorts, when he likens the 
automatic human being to the non-automatic piano, and 
makes them analogous in their action, in order to show 
that passing ideas do not have a continual existence in the 
mind, but that the actual existence is the physical struct- 
ure which, under like conditions, again evolves like com- 
binations, reduces us at once to the level of the piano, and 
precludes the potentiality of a new and original idea which 

* " Extemporaneous," Latin, ex, from ; and tempus, time, at the same 
time, or from the same time. Extemporaneous discourse is when the thought 
and the expression in which it is clothed occur at the time it is uttered, or 
without premeditation of both thought and language. "Improvisation" 
means the same thing, but it is specially applied to the act of making po- 
etry or performing music extemporaneously, that is, without prevision of 
what one is to say or sing. Rapid conversation is of the same nature. So 
is an instantaneous and unpremeditated answer to a question. 



MECHANICAL INVENTION. 475 

is not a combination of former ideas, and is produced under 
different conditions. The assertion or argument that each 
set of plexuses is capable of entering into countless com- 
binations with others, and so renders possible future ideas, 
does not advance us one step to the solution of what takes 
place when we conceive a new thought, clothe it in lan- 
guage, and write it down on paper, or give it oral expres- 
sion. 

In justification of this criticism, let me now refer to that 
intellectual process which is called "invention," in its ap- 
plication to the mechanic arts. I do not mean to suggest 
or to claim that this kind of invention is an act which is 
to be referred to a distinct and peculiar faculty of certain 
minds, in the possession of which one man may differ from 
another. But I shall endeavor to describe what takes place 
when one conceives the intellectual plan of a certain new 
combination of mechanical devices, and embodies that plan 
in a machine which differs from all other previous machines 
in its characteristic method of operation. For convenience, 
I shall speak of the person who produces such a machine 
as the inventor, which is the same as speaking of him as 
the maker, as the poet is the maker of a poem. This act 
of invention, or the making of some concrete new thing, is 
an act of creation. The inventor, then, may be supposed 
to have learned all that empirical and all that scientific 
mechanics could teach him ; to have had any quantity of 
passing groups of ideas pass through his consciousness ; to 
be possessed of any number of plexuses capable of entering 
into countless combinations with others. These plexuses, or 
networks of transitory ideas, consisting of former impres- 
sions in the nerve-center, must, it is said, be recalled under 
the like conditions which produced them. But the condi- 
tions for the inventor are not the same. Something is to be 
produced into which the old ideas do not enter. There is 
to be a new arrangement of old mechanical devices ; a new 



4Y6 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

combination is to be made, which will possess a method of 
operation and accomplish a result never before seen or ob- 
tained. A new concrete thing, a new machine, is to be 
created. That the conception must be formed, that the 
objective point, to which the whole intellectual effort is to 
aim, must be seen, is manifest. A tentative inteilectual 
process may have to be gone through before the full con- 
ception is reached, just as a tentative exioerimental process 
may be necessary in finding out how the practical embodi- 
ment of the conception is to be reached in building the 
structure. These processes may go on simultaneously or 
separately ; but, when they are both completed, when the 
new machine stands before us, we see at once that the plan 
is an intellectual conception, perfectly original, and the 
physical structure is a new arrangement of matter effected 
by the hand of the inventor or by the hands of others, 
which he uses as his instruments in doing the physical 
work. I do not know, therefore, how this phenomenon is 
to be explained upon the theory that the only ego is the 
body and its functions, which lies behind and determines 
ever-changing states of consciousness. I know not how else 
to interpret the phenomenon of invention, excepting to 
adopt the postulate that there is a mind, a substantive ex- 
istence, which, while its consciousness holds ideas suggested 
by former conditions, has the inherent power to originate 
ideas that did not form a part of any previous state of con- 
sciousness. 

I have spoken of mind as an organism and as a substan- 
tive existence. This is a deduction to be drawn from the 
manifestations of mental phenomena. In order to guard 
against an objection that may possibly be interposed in the 
way of this method of investigation, I will anticipate and 
answer it. It will be said that we can not define or describe 
the substance of mind ; can not tell whether it is a unit, in 
itself, or an aggregate of units ; we know and can know 



MATTER AND SPIRIT. 4YT 

nothing more than its approximate components, and all 
that we know of these does not justify ns in assuming to 
speak of the substance of mind. I have more than once 
suggested, in our former conferences, that our inability to 
define and to describe the substance of any supposed ex- 
istence is no proper objection to the hypothesis that there 
is such an existence. When we undertake to define mat- 
ter, or to describe the substance of that which we call mat- 
ter, we find that we soon reach a point where precise defini- 
tion or description ceases. Yet we do not for that reason 
refrain from deducing the existence of matter from the 
manifestations of certain phenomena and from our experi- 
ence with them. It is perfectly true that we know matter 
only by the manifestations of certain physical phenomena ; 
that we can not define the nature of its substance. All we 
can do, by the most minute analysis, is to arrive at the jDercep- 
tion of the ultimate particles or units of matter ; and the 
nature of the substance of which these units are composed is 
incapable of any further description. '' Matter " * is one of 
the words in the English language which are used in a great 
variety of senses, exact and inexact, literal and figurative. 
In its philosophical sense, meaning the substance of which 
all physical bodies are composed, the efforts of lexicographers 
to give a definition, descriptive of the nature of what is de- 
fined, show that definition is, strictly speaking, impossible. 
All that can be said is that matter is '^ substance extended " ; 
or that which is visible or tangible, as *' earth, wood, stone, 
air, vapor, water" ; or "the substance of which all bodies 
are composed." But these efforts at definition express 
only what is needful to be expressed in contrasting matter 
with that other existence which is called "spirit." This 
is another word which is used in very different senses, but 
of which no more exact definition can be given, when it is 
used in its philosophical sense, than can be given of "mat- 

* Webster's Dictionary — " Matter." 



478 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

ter." Lexicographers have defined '^spirit/' in one of 
its meanings, as "the soul of man ; the intelligent, imma- 
terial, and immortal part of human beings " ; and in an- 
other of its meanings, more broadly, as **an immaterial, 
intelligent substance." In these definitions they have fol- 
lowed the metaphysicians, and the uses of the word in the 
English translation of the Bible. When we turn to the 
definition of "soul," we find it given as "the spiritual and 
immortal substance in man, which distinguishes him from 
brutes ; that part of man which enables him to think and 
reason, and which renders him a subject of moral govern- 
ment." We also have it defined as "the understanding, 
the intellectual principle." Undoubtedly these definitions 
involve certain assumptions, such as the existence of a sub- 
stance called spirit, and the existence of an intellectual 
principle, of which "soul," "spirit," and "intellect" are 
mere names. But there is no difficulty in the way of our 
knowing what is meant when these terms are used. The 
difficulty of giving a definiton without a circuitous use of 
terms, explaining the one by the other, and then explain- 
ing the last by the first, does not prevent us from having 
a definite conception of the thing spoken of. When we 
speak of mind, soul, or intellect, what we think of is the 
something in ourselves of which we are conscious, and 
whose manifestations we observe in other beings like our- 
selves ; and what we have to do is to examine the evidence 
which may bring home to our convictions the existence of 
this something that perceives, thinks, acts, originates new 
ideas; holds former ideas in consciousness, is connected 
with and acts upon and is acted on by bodily organs, and 
is at the same time more than and different from those or- 
gans. 

I have referred to some of the mental phenomena which 
have the strongest tendency to prove the existence of the 
mind as an organized entity. These are the phenomena 



THE PHENOMENA OF SLEEP. 4.79 

which occur in our waking hours, when the intellectual 
faculties and the bodily organs are in the full exercise of 
their normal functions respectively. There is another 
class of mental phenomena which may be said to be ab- 
normal, in this, that the intellectual faculties and the bod- 
ily organs do not preserve the same relations to each other 
in all respects that they do when we are fully awake. 
These are the phenomena that occur during sleep — a class 
of mental phenomena of great consequence to be observed 
and analyzed in any study of psychology. They are of an 
extraordinary variety, complex in the highest degree, and 
dependent on numerous causes of mental and physical dis- 
turbance ; but it is quite possible to extract from some of 
them certain definite conclusions. 

Sleep, properly regarded, when it is perfect, is a state 
of absolute rest and inactivity of all the organs and func- 
tions of the body save the digestion of food and the circu- 
lation of the blood, and of all the mental faculties. Per- 
fect sleep, sleep in which there is absolutely no conscious- 
ness, is more rare than those states in which there is more 
or less consciousness. But it is often an actual state of 
both body and mind, and it was evidently designed to re- 
new the vigor of both, and to prevent the wear and tear of 
unbroken activity. Between absolute unconsciousness in- 
duced by perfect sleep and the full consciousness of our 
waking moments, there are many intermediate states ; and 
the phenomena of these intermediate states present very 
strong proofs of the existence of the mind as a special 
and spiritual entity, capable in greater or less degree of 
acting without the aid of the physical organs. I do not ex- 
cept even the organ of the brain from this suspension of 
action during certain states when the mind is in more or 
less of activity ; for I am convinced that in some of the 
mental phenomena to which I shall advert and which I 
shall endeavor to describe, the brain is in a state of perfect 



480 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

sleep, and that in the production of those phenomena it 
takes no part. In other mental phenomena, which occur 
during sleep, the brain or some part of it is evidently 
acted upon by the mind, as in the somnambulistic condi- 
tion, when the nerves of motion, responding to the action 
of the mind, communicate action to the muscles, and the 
body walks about and performs other external acts. 

There are other mental phenomena occurring during 
very profound sleep of the body and its organs, when the 
mind does not appear to derive its action from the brain, 
or to be dependent on the brain for its activity ; when it 
is exceedingly active, and when it communicates action to 
none of the bodily organs ; when, for example, it carries on 
long trains of thought, composes sentences, invents con- 
versations, makes poetry and prose, and performs other 
intellectual processes. Distributed into classes, the most 
important mental phenomena occurring during sleep are 
the following : 

First, and presenting perhaps the strongest proof of the 
mind's independence of all the bodily organs, is that whole 
class of mental phenomena in which, during profound 
sleep of the body, we carry on conversations, compose origi- 
nal matter in the form of oral or written discourse, which 
we seem to ourselves to be producing, and solve intellectual 
difficulties which have baffled us when awake, or imagine 
that we receive from an unexpected source important in- 
formation that we are not conscious of having previously 
received. 

The phenomena of conversations, to which we appear 
to ourselves to be listening during sleep, or in which we ap- 
pear to ourselves to be taking part, are, when analyzed, most 
remarkable occurrences, for it is the mind of the sleeper 
which originates the whole of what appears to be said by 
different persons. These conversations are as vivid, as 
much marked by different intellectual and personal charac- 



CONVERSATIONS DURING SLEEP. 481 

teristics, sudden and unexpected turns, apt repartee, inter- 
change of ideas between two or more persons, as are the 
real conversations which we overhear, or in which we take 
part, when we are awake. Yet the whole of what is said, 
or appears to us to be said, is the invention of the one mind, 
which appears to itself to be listening to or talking with 
other minds, and all the while the body is wrapped in pro- 
found sleep. This extraordinary intellectual feat, so familiar 
to us that it scarcely attracts our attention unless we under- 
take to analyze it, is closely akin to the action of the mind 
when the body and the mind are neither of them asleep, and 
when we invent a conversation between different persons. 
But this occurrence is marked by another extraordinary pe- 
culiarity : for it happens, during sleep, to persons who could 
not, when awake, invent and write sucli conversations at 
will, and who in their waking hours have very little of the 
imaginative faculty needed for such productions. I ac- 
count for this phenomenon by the hypothesis that when the 
mind is free from the necessity of depending on the bodily 
organs for its action, as it is during profound sleep of the 
body, when its normal relations with the body are com- 
pletely suspended and it is left to its independent action, it 
has a power of separate action. This, I think, accounts for 
a kind of mental action which, when compared with that 
which occurs in conjunction with the action of the bodily 
organs, may be called abnormal. Under the impulse of its 
own unrestrained and uncorrected activity, the mind goes 
through processes of invention, the products of which are 
sometimes wild and incoherent, sometimes exceedingly co- 
herent, sensible, and apt. Let the person to whom this 
occurs be thoroughly awakened out of one of these states, 
and the mind becomes immediately again subjected to the 
necessity of acting along with, and under the conditions of 
its normal relations to the body. 

Akin to this mental feat of inventing conversations, 



482 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

during a sleep of the body, is the power of composing, dur- 
ing such sleep, oral discourse of one's own, or the power of 
composing something which we appear to ourselves to be 
writing. I suppose this is an occurrence which happens to 
most persons who are much accustomed to writing or to 
public speaking. It is often an involuntary action of the 
mind ; that is to say, it is sometimes accompanied with a 
distinct consciousness that it is a process that ought to be 
arrested because it is a dangerous one, and yet it can not 
be arrested before full waking consciousness returns. On 
goes the flow of thought and language, apparently with 
great success ; we seem to be speaking or writing with even 
more than our usual power, and all the while in the style 
that belongs to us ; but, until we are fully restored to the 
normal relation of the mind and the body, we can not at will 
arrest this independent action of the mind, but must wait 
until our bodily senses are again in full activity. I do not 
suppose that this phenomenon ought to be explained by the 
hypothesis that there are certain parts or organs of the 
brain which are specially concerned in the work of origi- 
nal composition of intellectual matter, and that these or- 
gans are not affected by the sleep that is prevailing in other 
parts of the brain. While it is doubtless true that there 
are special systems of nerves which proceed from or con- 
duct to special parts of the brain, and by which action is 
imparted to or received from the other organs of the body, 
and while some of these special parts of the brain may be 
in the state of absolute inactivity called sleep, and others 
are not, I know of no warrant for the h3rpothesis that the 
intellectual operations or processes are dependent upon any 
particular organ or organs of the brain, as distinguished 
from those from and to which proceed special systems of ' 
nerves. If any person, who is much accustomed to that 
kind of intellectual activity which consists in original 
composition of intellectual matter, will attend to his own 



COMPOSITION DUEmG SLEEP. 483 

consciousness, and probe it as far as he may, he will not 
find reason, I apprehend, to conclude that the power of 
thought and of clothing thought in language resides in any 
special part of the brain. His experience and introspection 
will be more likely to lead him to the conclusion that this 
power, whether it is exerted when he is asleep or awake 
bodily, is a power that inheres in the mind itself regarded 
as a spiritual existence and organism, and that the action 
of the brain, or of any part of it, is necessary to the exercise 
of this power only when it is necessary, as it is in our wak- 
ing moments, to use some of the bodily organs in order to 
give the thought oral or written expression by giving it 
utterance through the vocal organs or by writing it down 
on paper. Certain it is that we conceive thoughts in more 
or less of connected sequence, and clothe them intellectually 
in language of which we have entire consciousness while 
the process is going on, without the action of any part of 
the body. 

It may be objected to this view that the intellectual 
products which we seem to ourselves to be making when 
we are asleep would, if they could be repeated by an effort 
of the memory, word for word, just as they seem to have 
occurred, be found to be of the same incoherent, senseless 
stuff of which all dreams are made ; and that this test 
would show that the brain is at such times not absolutely 
and completely in the condition which is called sleep, but 
that it is only partially in that condition ; that it is per- 
forming its function feebly, imperfectly, and not as it per- 
forms that function when the whole body is awake. In 
reference to this hypothesis, I will repeat an anecdote which 
I have somewhere read, which is equally valuable whether 
it was an imaginary or a real occurrence. 

A gentleman of literary pursuits, who was a very re- 
spectable poet, was subject to this habit of composition 
during sleep. One night he awoke his wife and informed 
23 



484 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

her that lie had coinj)osed in his dream some of the best 
and most original yerses that he had ever written. He 
begged her at once to get a candle, pen, ink, and paper, 
and let him dictate to her the new composition that ap- 
peared to him so striking. When they read together the 
new poem on the next morning, it turned out to be non- 
sensically puerile. But occurrences of this kind, if they 
could be multiplied, would prove only that we are liable to 
illusions in sleep, in regard to the comparative merits of 
our intellectual products, which we imagine ourselves to be 
creating when we are in that state, as we are in regard to 
other things. We are under a delusion when we imagine 
in our dreams that we encounter and converse with another 
person, living or dead. We are perhaps deluding ourselves 
when in sleep we compose or seem to compose an original 
poem. But what is it that deludes itself, either in respect 
to the interview with another person, or in respect to the 
new composition ? Is it the brain, or is it the mind ? Is 
it a person, or a bodily organ that has the false impression, 
in the one case or the other ? There must be a something 
that is subject to an illusion, before there can be an illusion. 
If both brain and mind are in profound sleep, absolute sus- 
pension of all action, there can be no illusion about any- 
thing. If the brain is absolutely asleep and the mind is 
not, the illusion is in the mind and not in the brain. That 
the latter is what often occurs, the experience of the illit- 
erate and uncultivated makes them aware, as well as the 
experience of the lettered scholar and the practiced writer.* 
Under the same head, I will now refer to those strange 
but familiar occurrences which take place when there come 
to us, in sleep, solutions of difficulties which we had not 

* "And it shall be as when a hungry man dreameth, and behold, he 
eateth : but he awaketh, and his soul is empty ; or as when a thirsty man 
dreameth, and behold, he drinketh : but he awaketh, and behold, he is 
faint, and his soul hath appetite." — Isaiah. 



NEW THOUGHTS DURING SLEEP. 485 

overcome bj all our efforts while awake, and which appeared 
to us utterly dark when we lay down to rest. These men- 
tal phenomena are almost innumerably various. They take 
place in regard to all kinds of subjects, to lines of conduct 
and action, to everything about which our thoughts are em- 
ployed ; and they are a class of phenomena within every- 
body's experience. There is scarcely any one to whom it 
has not happened to lie down at night with a mind dis- 
tressed and perplexed about some problem that requires a 
definite solution, and to rise in the morning, usually after 
a night of undisturbed rest, with his mind perfectly clear 
on the subject, and with just the solution that did not 
come to him when he devoted to it all his waking thoughts. 
What is the explanation of this phenomenon ? If the mind 
is an independent entity, a spiritual organism, capable of 
its own action without the aid of the body under certain 
circumstances, this phenomenon can be explained. If the 
mind is not a spiritual organism, capable, under any cir- 
cumstances, of acting without the aid of the bodily organs, 
this phenomenon can not be explained. 

The most probable explanation is this : When we are 
awake, and devote our thoughts to a particular subject that 
is attended with great difficulties, we go over the same 
ground repeatedly — the mind travels and toils in the same 
ruts. Nothing new occurs, because we look at the subject 
in the same way every time we think of it. We are liable 
to be kept in the same beaten path by the associations be- 
tween our thoughts and the bodily states in which we have 
those thoughts — associations which are exceedingly power- 
ful. But let these associations be dissolved as they are 
during perfect sleep — let the mind be in a condition to act 
without being dependent on the brain or any other bodily 
organ for aid, or exposed to be hampered by the condi- 
tions of the body, and there will be a mental activity in 
which ideas will be wrought out that did not occur to us 



486 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

while we were awake. The memory, too, may recall a fact 
which we had learned while awake, and yet we may be un- 
able to recollect how it came to our knowledge. At such 
times, the fact is recalled ; but as the mind is acting in a 
condition which is abnormal when compared with the wak- 
ing condition, and is liable to delusions about some things, 
we imagine that the fact is revealed to us in some wild and 
supernatural way, as by a person who is dead and who has 
come to us to communicate it. There is a well-authenti- 
cated account of an occurrence of this kind, given by Sir 
"Walter Scott in one of the notes to his "Antiquary," and 
on which he founds an incident related by one of the per- 
sonages in his story. The real occurrence was this : A gen- 
tleman in Scotland was involved in a litigation about a 
claim asserted upon his landed estate. He had a strong 
conviction that his father had bargained and paid for a re- 
lease of the claim, but he could find no such paper. With- 
out it he was sure to be defeated in the suit. Distressed by 
this prospect, but utterly unable to see any way out of his 
misfortune, he lay down to sleep, on the night before he 
was to go into Edinburgh to attend the trial of the cause. 
He dreamed that his father appeared to him, and told him 
that the claim had been released, and that the paper was in 
the hands of a lawyer in a neighboring town, whose name 
the paternal shade mentioned. 

Before going into Edinburgh on the next day, the gentle- 
man rode to the place which his father had indicated, and 
found the lawyer, of whose name he had been previously 
unconscious. This person turned out to be an old man, 
who had forgotten the fact that he had transacted this 
piece of business for the gentleman's father ; but on being 
told of the fact that his client had paid his fee in a foreign 
coin of a peculiar character — which was one part of the 
story which the father's apparition related to the son — he 
recalled the whole of the circumstances, searched for the 



DELUSIONS m SLEEP. 487 

paper, and found it. The gentleman's estate was saved to 
him ; but he became very superstitious about dreams, and 
suffered much from that cause, as was quite naturah Sir 
Walter's solution of the whole affair is of course the correct 
one : "The dream was only the recapitulation of informa- 
tion which Mr. R had really received from his father 

while in life, but which at first he merely recalled as a gen- 
eral impression that the claim was settled. It is not un- 
common for persons to recover, during sleep, the thread of 
ideas which they have lost during their waking hours. " * 
Sir Walter makes another observation which is worthy of 
being repeated — that in dreams men are not surprised by 
apparitions. Why are we not ? Because the mind is in a 
state of abnormal activity, in which everything that occurs 
to it seems perfectly natural. The delusion in regard to 
the mode in which the very important fact was communi- 
cated to Mr. R in his dream, was substituted in the 

place of the actual communication made to him by his 
father during life. The latter he had wholly forgotten, 
and he had forgotten the circumstance of payment of the 
lawyer's fee in a peculiar coin, which had also been men- 
tioned to him by his father when living. This remarkable 
incident, which might doubtless be paralleled by many simi- 
lar occurrences, proves one of two things : either that the 
exercise of the memory is wholly dependent upon a waking 
condition of the brain, or that there may be an abnormal 
and imperfect act of memory while the brain is in profound 
sleep, in the course of which a fact becomes mixed with a 
delusion about the mode in which we are told of the fact. 

What happened to Mr. R was that his mind recalled 

the fact, but imagined that he then learned it for the first 
time from an apparition. I do not know how such a phe- 
nomenon can be explained, excepting by the hypothesis that 

* Scott's "Antiquary," note v. 



488 CREATION OR EVOLUTION ? 

the mind is a special existence, which acts during sleep of 
the body upon facts that are lodged in the memory, but 
mixes them with imaginary and delusive appearances, so 
that the mode in which the fact was actually learned is ob- 
literated from the memory, and some supernatural mode of 
communication takes its place. On the return of waking 
consciousness, the mode in which the fact was actually 
learned is still shut out from recollection, and, if the person 
to whom this kind of delusion has occurred is of a super- 
stitious turn, he will act on what he has imagined was told 
him by the apparition, because he has no other means of 
rescuing himself from an evil. 

In regard to the mental phenomena which occur with- 
out delusions or apparitions, where the thoughts on a dif- 
ficult subject become clearer and more satisfactory to us 
when we awake from sleep than they ever were during our 
waking hours, I suppose the explanation is this : During 
profound sleep of the body, including the brain, there is 
an entire suspension of every bodily function excepting 
the digestion of food and the circulation of the blood. If 
there is excited in some of the other organs an action of 
a peculiar kind, by an excitation of the nerves connected 
with those organs, it is proof that the condition of perfect 
sleep is not prevailing in all parts of the brain. The state 
to which I now refer supposes a complete inactivity of the 
whole bodily organism save in the digestive function and 
the circulation of the blood. In such a state, the mind, 
that which thinks and reasons, does not act upon the brain, 
and is not acted upon by it. It is capable of thinking on 
any subject which has employed its thoughts during the 
waking hours ; and while, in some cases, it is visited by ap- 
paritions and subject to delusions, it is in other cases en- 
gaged in ideas that involve no delusive appearances. Freed 
from all the associations of these ideas with the feelings pre- 
vailing in the body when we think of the subject during 



BETTER THOUGHTS DURmG SLEEP. 489 

our waking hours, we are able to perceive relations of the 
subject which have not before occurred to us. "When we 
pass from the condition of sleep to the full consciousness 
of our bodily and mental organism, we are intellectually 
possessed of these new relations of the subject, which we 
haye brought with us out of the state in which we acquired 
them, and they furnish us with new materials for the solu- 
tion of the problem that we had not solved when we lay 
down to rest. It is not, I am persuaded, because the mind 
was at rest during sleep, and when we become awake is by 
reason of that rest better able to grapple with the difficul- 
ties of the subject, that we do grapple with them success- 
fully ; for in the case supposed, which is a very common 
experience, the thoughts are actually employed on the sub- 
ject, while the body and the brain are in the absolute rest 
and inactivity of all the organic functions excepting those 
of digestion and circulation of the blood. I do not know 
that it is possible to detect, in a person sleeping, an in- 
creased circulation of the blood to any part of the brain 
which may be supposed to be concerned in the act of think- 
ing, and at the same time to know that thinking is going 
on, unless such an observation could be made of a person 
in the state called somnambulism, which is not the state of 
which I am now speaking. But reasoning upon the phe- 
nomenon which I have now described, according to all that 
we can learn from our own experience or from observation 
of others, I reach the conclusion that the mind, the think- 
ing and reasoning entity, can and does, in profound sleep 
of the body and the brain, employ itself upon a subject that 
has occupied us when awake, and can perceive new rela- 
tions of that subject, which had not before occurred to us, 
without the activity of any portion of the nerve-center 
which is called the brain. Does this hypothesis assume 
that our thoughts when asleep are more valuable than our 
waking thoughts ? It does, to a certain extent and under 



490 CEEATION OE EVOLUTION? 

certain circumstances, for experience proves that in sleep 
we acquire ideas which we did not have before we fell 
asleep, and which we bring with us out of that condition. 

That I have now given the true explanation of this fa- 
miliar experience will appear, I think, from this considera- 
tion : There are very few nights when we do not in sleep 
have many thoughts. The states of perfect unconscious- 
ness are comparatively rare. If the brain were never 
entirely asleep, if it were always engaged in the physical 
work of thinking — whatever that work may be — it would 
be worn out prematurely. But if the brain is perfectly at 
rest, while the mind is actively employed, the brain under- 
goes no strain and suffers no exhaustion ; and the mind 
suffers no strain or exhaustion because it is in its nature 
incapable of wear and tear. It is only when the mind acts 
on the brain that exhaustion takes place. I speak now of 
what happens in states of ordinarily good health.* 

* If it is objected that I have allowed Sophereus to overstate the power 
of the mind to deal better with diflSculties after "a good night's sleep," as 
we say, than it had dealt with them before, I will cite the testimony of one 
of the most prolific of writers and one of the most self-observing of men, 
Sir Walter Scott, whose greatest success was achieved in the field of poeti- 
cal and prose fiction. This is a department in which inventive genius is 
the main reliance, and is put to its greatest tasks. In that part of Scott's 
"Diary "which covers the year 1826 — the period when he was writing 
" Woodstock " — he says : 

" The half -hour between waking and rising has all my life proved pro- 
pitious to any task which was exercising my invention. When I got over 
any knotty difficulty in a story, or have had in former times to fill up a 
passage in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the 
desired ideas thronged upon me. This is so much the case that I am in the 
habit of relying upon it and saying to myself when I am at a loss, ' Never 
mind, we shall have it at seven o'clock to-morrow morning.' If I have for- 
got a circumstance, a name, or a copy of verses, it is the same thing. . . . 
This morning I had some new ideas respecting ' Woodstock ' which will make 
the story better." (Lockhart's " Life of Scott," vol. viii, chap. Ixviii.) 

This, it is true, was the experience of a man of extraordinary genius, 



LADY MACBETH'S SLEEP-WALKING. 491 

I shall now refer to some of the very peculiar phenom- 
ena of somnambulism ; and in illustration of their yarious 
phases I shall resort to Shakespeare's picture of the sleep- 



whose facility of invention was as marvelous as the ease and rapidity with 
which he wrote. But his experience was a very common one. It has been 
shared by persons of much more humble faculties. I am sure that per- 
sons in my own profession, who have been engaged in pursuits very differ- 
ent from those of the poet or the novelist, will, from their own experience, 
confirm what is assumed by Sophereus as a well-known mental phenome- 
non. I could describe in detail many instances in which I have gone 
through with the same fruition of new ideas, resulting from the acquisi- 
tions obtained during sleep, or following from the benefits of sleep. For 
example, when having to do with a complex state of facts, needing orderly 
arrangement and analysis, it has repeatedly happened to me to rise in the 
morning after a night of undisturbed sleep, with the whole of an entangled 
skein unraveled, whereas before retiring to rest the mass of facts lay in 
some confusion in the mind. In like manner the mind can often deal with 
a legal question of a new and difficult character. The rule that ought to 
be applied to a particular case has to be extracted from many precedents, 
and perhaps none of them exactly cover the case in hand. On such occa- 
sions, if one refrains from pushing the study of his subject while awake 
to the severest analysis, and postpones the effort until the next morning, 
the experience of Sir Walter is very likely to be repeated. " It was 
always,'' he says, "when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas 
thronged upon mc." I am persuaded, therefore, that although in the study 
of any subject omission to master all its elements and details, when alone 
one can accumulate them, is not to be recommended, there is undoubtedly 
much to be gained by relieving the mind from the continued effort, and 
allowing some hours of sleep to intervene, during which the mind can act 
independently of all the bodily organs. 

The question is, then, as above suggested, whether there come to us 
during sleep acquisitions of new ideas with or without a simultaneous con- 
sciousness that we are thinking of the subject, or whether the new ideas 
follow from the benefits of sleep as a state of absolute rest and inactivity 
of the brain, and of the intellectual faculties, so that when we awake both 
the brain and the mental powers are in greater vigor. The expression used 
by Scott in describing his own experience is that as soon as he awoke the 
desired ideas thronged upon him. This might happen upon the hypothesis 
that the desired ideas came because the brain and the mental powers, re- 



492 CKEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

walking of Lady Macbeth, whicli, although purely imagi- 
nary, is a most accurate exhibition of nature. Treating it, 
as we are entitled to treat it, as if it were a real occurrence 
at which we ourselves were witnesses, with a knowledge of 
her character and history, an analysis of the situation in 
which she was placed when the habit of somnambulism 
came upon her, and of the mode in which her mind acted 
upon her body, will enable us to see the phenomena in 
their true philosophical aspect. We may suppose ourselyes 
present, with the doctor and the gentlewoman of her bed- 
chamber, when she comes forth in her night-dress and with 
a candle in her hand, and we witness the impressiye scene 
of a disturbed mind overmastering the body while the body 
is asleep. It seems that, after the murder of Duncan, when 
she imbrued her own hands with his blood iii smearing the 
faces of his sleeping grooms, the habit of sleep-walking had 

freshed by sleep, were in greater vigor. But I incline to believe that his 
meaning was the reverse of this. At all events, it seems to me that the 
true explanation of the phenomenon is that during sound and undisturbed 
sleep of the body, including the brain, we do unconsciously think of the 
subject on which our waking thoughts had been previously employed; 
that in these states there are acquisitions of new ideas which we bring 
with us out of the state in which they were acquired, or, as Sir Walter 
expressed it, which throng upon us as soon as we open our eyes. While, 
therefore, it may be said that this hypothesis assumes the existence of the 
mind as a spiritual or intellectual entity capable of action as a thinking 
being without any action of the bodily organs, the question is, on the other 
hand, whether the phenomena here considered have not a very strong tend- 
ency to prove that the mind is such a substantive and independent exist- 
ence. When it is remembered how common is the experience here referred 
to, how various the phenomena are, how they are manifested on all kinds 
of subjects, in regard to lines of conduct, and to everything about which we 
are perplexed, and when we add these peculiar phenomena to the other 
evidence which tends to establish the same belief in the existence of the 
mind as something entirely apart from all its physical environment, it 
seems to me that the argument becomes very strong, and that I have not 
made my imaginary philosopher press it beyond its legitimate bounds. 



LADY MACBETH'S SLEEP-WALKING. 493 

come over her. As we stand by the side of the awe- 
stricken witnesses, and hear their whispered conyersation, 
we get the first description of her actions since the new 
king, Macbeth, her husband, whom she had instigated to 
murder the old king, went into the field. These first ac- 
tions of hers, as described by the gentlewoman to the doc- 
tor, do not necessarily exhibit the working of a guilty con- 
science. They exhibit a mind oppressed and disturbed by 
cares of business and of state ; and they are a distinct class 
of the phenomena of somnambulism. The gentlewoman 
tells the doctor that ''since his Majesty went into the field, 
I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown 
upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write 
upon it, read it, afterward seal it, and again return to bed ; 
yet all this while in a most fast sleep." This is merely a 
description of what the witness has seen, and it might oc- 
cur to any person of strong intellectual faculties, disturbed 
by great cares, without the action of a guilty conscience. It 
makes the situation real vfhen the doctor recognizes the fact 
of this "great perturbation in nature! to receive at once 
the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching." As 
they are whispering together, the doctor trying to make the 
gentlewoman tell him what at such times she has heard her 
say, which the loyal servant refuses to tell, Lady Macbeth 
moves forward, with the taper in her hand. 

Here we may pause upon the first exhibition of the 
phenomenon called sleep-walking, which we get by descrip- 
tion only, and analyze the nature of the action. It is per- 
fectly apparent that what the poet accepted as true, is the 
power of the mind to move the body while the body is 
asleep, so as to make it perform many acts. Experience 
makes this assumption perfectly correct. I presume it 
will not be questioned that this phenomenon is described 
by Shakespeare with entire accuracy, and it is explicable 
only upon the hypothesis that the mind has some control 



494 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

oyer tlie body while the body is asleep. Actions as minute 
and as much premeditated as those performed by Lady 
Macbeth '4n a most fast sleep," haye been witnessed in 
persons who were undoubtedly asleep, and whose eyes were 
open for some purposes, but, as in her case, their sense was 
shut for other purposes. 

We now pass to the more awful exhibition of a mind 
worked upon by a guilty conscience. Lady Macbeth comes 
out of her bedroom fast asleep, but with a light in her 
hand. The gentlewoman who interprets her state to the 
doctor informs him that she has a light by her bedside con- 
tinuously ; and we thus learn that her nights are so dis- 
turbed that she can not bear darkness. They notice that 
her eyes are open, but *Hheir sense is shut." Then begin 
the terrific manifestations of the control of a guilty con- 
science oyer both mind and body, when the memory, aliye 
to certain terrible facts, plays fantastic tricks with itself, 
and mingles delusions with realities. As she approaches, 
with the taper in her hand, she performs an action which 
the gentlewoman says she has repeatedly seen her go 
through, for a quarter of an hour at a time, endeayoring to 
rub a spot of blood off from one of her hands. Her hands 
haye been clean, physically, since the time when she first 
washed them on the fatal night ; but the delusion that is 
upon her is that there is blood on them still. She goes on 
rubbing them, and her first exclamation is, " Out, damned 
spot ! out, I say ! " Yet it will not out. That little hand 
wears what she imagines to be an indelible stain. After 
her first exclamation, the memory rushes back to the mo- 
ment before the murder. She thinks she hears, perhaps 
does hear, the clock strike — ^'^one, two"; and then, as if 
speaking to her husband, she says, " Why, then 'tis time to 
do't." Then there is a pause, and out comes the reflection, 
*'Hell is murky !" This seems to indicate that darkness, 
in which she and her husband are whispering together just 



LADY MACBETH'S SLEEP-WALKING. 495 

before the murder, is a hell, and so very fit for what is 
about to be done. Hell is murky, as this chamber is. 
Then she remembers her husband's reluctance, and fancy- 
ing that she is still talking with him and bracing him up 
to the deed, she says : ^' Fye, my lord, fye ! a soldier, and 
afeard ? What need ^q fear who knows it, when none can 
call QiWY jpower to account ? " Presently she is looking back 
upon the deed, and exclaims, *^ Yet who would have 
thought the old man to have had so much blood in him ! " 
Then she recurs to herself as if she were another : **The 
thane of Fife had a wife ; where is slie now ? " Again 
she thinks of her stained hands : "What, will these hands 
ne^er be clean ?" Are they to wear this horrible stain for- 
ever ? Instantly she is again at the door of Duncan's 
chamber, speaking to her husband : "No more o' that, my 
lord, no more o' that : you mar all with this starting ! " 
Then her hands again, her poor hands ; they smell of the 
blood : "Here's the smell of the blood still : all the per- 
fumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand ! Oh, oh, 
oh I " Then, after another pause, she is speaking to her hus- 
band, when the deed has been done : " Wash your hands, 
put on your night-gown ; look not so pale ! " In another 
instant she is thinking of Banquo's murder, which occurred 
after Duncan's, and she says to her husband : "I tell you 
yet again, Banquo's luried ; he can not come out of his 
gravel" Once more she is back at the door of Duncan's 
chamber, in the darkness, and the murder has been com- 
mitted. Speaking to her husband, she says : " To bed, to 
bed ; there's knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, 
come, give me your hand. What's done can not be undone. 
To bed, to bed, to bed ! " Then she goes quickly toward 
her chamber and to bed, believing that Macbeth is with her 
and that she is holding his hand. 

How mixed, how wild, how fantastic, how coherent and 
incoherent are these phantoms of the imagination I If she 



496 CREATIOJ^ OR EVOLUTION? 

were awake, things would not thus present themselves to 
her* Every event in the dreadful story would stand in its 
true relations, and, however she might he suffering the 
pangs of a guilty conscience, she would not mix up the 
scenes through which she had passed, hut every fact would 
stand in its due order. She would be conscious that there 
was no blood upon her hands, and that they did not need 
the perfumes of Arabia to sweeten them. She would know 
that Duncan had been murdered, and would not enact the 
murder over again. She would remember that Banquo's 
murder had not been distinctly made known to her, and 
that she had only surmised it, when at the banquet Macbeth 
fancied that the ghost of Ban quo rose and sat at the table 
— an apparition which neither she nor any one else saw. 
But, in that strange scene, it flashed across her mind that 
Banquo was dead, and to herself she interpreted truly what 
was passing in her husband's mind, and instantly explained 
his conduct to the company as the recurrence of an old 
malady to which he was subject. 

If we go back to what had actually happened before the 
banquet, and then go forward to the condition in which 
she is seen by the doctor and her attendant, we shall un- 
derstand how her mind was working, not upon a fact that 
she knew, but upon a fact which she had truly surmised. 
In her somnambulistic state, she says to her husband : ^^ I tell 
you yet again, Banquo's buried ; he can not come out of 
his grave." Had she said this to him before ? According 
to the course of the story, as the text of the play gives it 
to us, she had not. In the second scene of the third act, 
where, after Duncan had been murdered and Macbeth had 
become king, they are preparing for the banquet, to which 
Banquo was expected as one of the guests, Macbeth and his 
wife are talking together, and she is trying to get him out 
of the contemplative and conscience - stricken mood in 
which he looks back upon what they have done. He con- 



THE BAl^QUET IN MA.CBETH. 497 

eludes one of his mixed and melancholy reflections with 

these words : 

Dnncan is in his grave ; 
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ; 
Treason has done his worst : nor steel, nor poison, 
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing 
Can touch him further ! 

Then she says to him : 

Ladi/ Macbeth, Come on ; 
Gentle mj lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks; 
Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night. 

Macbeth. So shall I, love ; and so, I pray, be you ; 
Let your remembrance apply to Banquo ; 
Present him eminence^^ both with eye and tongue: 
Unsafe the while, that we 

Must lave our honors in these flattering streams ; 
And make our faces vizards to our hearts, 
Disguising what they are. 

Just at this moment, therefore, he is not thinking of 
killing Banquo, but wishes him to be received with all 
honor. But, in answer to his last reflection on the hypo- 
critical part that they must act, she says to him : 

You must leave this. 

Then bursts forth the terrific oppression of his soul : 
Macb. Oh, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! 

Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives. 
Lady M. But in them nature^s copy''s not eterne.f 
Macb. There's comfort yet ; they are assailable ; 

Then be thou jocund : ere the bat hath flown 

* Do him every honor. 

f By some commentators, this bint, given with female subtilty, is ex- 
plained to mean that their copy-hold, or lease, by which Banquo and his 
son hold their lives, is not eternal. The more probable meaning is that, if 
they are cut off, nature will produce no more copies of their race. But in 
either meaning the hint that she gave was the same, and it included both 
Banquo and his son. 



498 CREATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

His cloistered flight ; ere, to black Hecate's summons, 
The shard-borne bettle, with his drowsy hums, 
Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done 
A deed of dreadful note ! 

She affects not to understand him — perhaps does not — 
and slie asks : 

Whafs to be done ? 

MacI), Be innocent of the Jcnowledge, dearest chuck, 
Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night, 
Skarf up the tender eye of pitiful day ; 
And, with thy bloody and invisible hand. 
Cancel, and tear to pieces, that great bond 
Which keeps me pale! — Light thickens; and the crow 
Makes wing to the rooky wood ; 
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse ; 
"While night's black agents to their prey do rouse. 
Thou marvel'st at my words : but hold thee still ; 
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill: 
So, prithee, go with me. [Exeunt, 

In the next scene, the murderers, previously engaged 
by Macbeth, waylay Banquo in the park as he is approach- 
ing the castle, and kill him, his son Fleance and a servant 
escaping. Then follows the banquet, Macbeth himself 
moving about at first, and then he takes a seat at the table 
lower down. One of the murderers comes in and whispers 
to him what has been done. The stage direction is, " The 
ghost of Banquo rises and sits in Macbeth's place." As no 
one at the table but Macbeth sees this apparition, it might 
be inferred that it is the force of his imagination which 
presents the spectacle to him, as Lady Macbeth supposes, 

when she says to him : 

O proper stuff! 
This is the very painting of your fear: 
This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said, 
Led you to Duncan. 

But the stage direction must be taken as a literal ap- 



ABNORMAL ACTION OF THE MIND IN SLEEP. 499 

pearance of the ghost, so as to make it visible to the audi- 
ence, while it is invisible to all at the table excepting Mac- 
beth himself. 

If, now, we go forward to the night when Lady Macbeth 
is walking in her sleep, and remember what had occurred 
previous to and at the banquet, we see how, without any 
actual previous knowledge that her husband intended to 
have Banquo killed, and with only the surmise that he had 
been killed, which comes to her at the banquet, she came 
to say to her husband, in her dream : 

I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried ; he can not come out of Lis 
grave. 

Here we have a fact lodged in the mind during the 
waking hours, and in sleep wrought into a strange mixture 
with the killing of Duncan, with which it had in reality 
no connection, having transpired afterward. This is very 
strong proof of the capacity of the mind to act during sleep 
without the action of the brain. The mind of the guilty 
sleep-walker is filled with horrible memories, which it can 
not shut out, but with which it can not deal in their actual 
order and true relations, because the sequences of thought, 
during sleep, are abnormal. Those whose experience has 
never involved any such workings of conscience are per- 
fectly aware of the fact that in dreams ideas that are sepa- 
rately lodged in the consciousness become entangled with 
each other in the most fantastic manner. Lady Macbeth 
at one moment even thinks of herself as if she were some 
one else, and asks. Where is the woman now who was the 
wife of the thane of Fife ? Every one has experienced in 
sleep the same projection of one's self out of one's own 
consciousness ; so that we seem to be contemplating our- 
selves as if we were a different person. 

The phenomena that occur during the delirium of fever, 
where the normal consciousness is lost for the time being. 



500 creatio^nt or evolution? 

are in some respects analogous to and in some respects dif- 
ferent from those which occur during the somnambulistic 
condition. Delirium occurs when the body and the brain 
are not in the condition of sleep ; but the senses of percep- 
tion convey false impressions to the mind, and the mind 
itself has temporarily lost its power of correcting its own 
action by its former experience. The nearest friends who 
are around the bedside are not recognized by the sufferer ; 
they appear to be strangers, and the patient talks to them 
as if both they and he were not their real selves. It would 
seem that we can safely infer from the state of delirium a 
suspension of the direct and normal connection between 
the brain and the mind ; that neither of them can act, in re- 
lation to the other, as they both act when there is no such 
disturbance ; but that this condition, so far from proving 
or tending to prove that the mind is not an independent 
spiritual existence, has a strong tendency to prove that it 
is. Insanity, on the other hand, is probably a derange- 
ment of the mental organism akin to derangement of the 
physical organism, but not necessarily connected with or 
induced by the latter, for the bodily health of the insane is 
often entirely sound while the mind is in an entirely un- 
sound and irrational condition. But the phenomena of in- 
sanity are too various and multiform, and too much depend- 
ent on both physical and moral causes, to afford any satisfac- 
tory proofs of the postulate which I propound in this essay. 
The safest line of investigation is that which I suggested in 
the first instance, namely, to regard the mind as an organ- 
ism, and to ascertain whether it is susceiDtible of anatomical 
examination in a sense analogous to anatomical examination 
of the bodily organism. All that I have hitherto said is 
useful by way of preliminary illustration of my main hy- 
pothesis. It has a strong tendency to show that the mind, 
instead of consisting, as some philosophers now suppose, of 
the products of a material organism, is itself an organized 



PEODUCTS OF MATERIAL ORGANISMS. 501 

being with a definite structure and capable of living a life 
of its own, although at present dwelling in a corporeal or- 
ganism which affects it in various ways while the connec- 
tion lasts. The theory that all mental phenomena are 
products of our corporeal organism is one that appears to 
derive great support from examinations of the structure of 
the brain and of the whole nervous system. The physical 
anatomy of man exhibits very striking illustrations of the 
influence of corjDoreal changes upon the mental state, as the 
mental changes show corresponding influences upon the cor- 
poreal state. But, then, there are undoubtedly phenomena 
that are purely and exclusively mental ; and therefore when 
we undertake to solve these mental phenomena by the ma- 
terialistic hypothesis we find a sense of inadequate causa- 
tion confronting us so directly that we are compelled to 
look for a solution elsewhere. It is certain that things 
take place in the inner recesses of our minds, in the pro- 
duction of which the bodily senses not only render no aid, 
but in which they have no part whatever. It is necessary, 
therefore, to carry our investigations into a class of mental 
phenomena in which all physical causation ceases to afford 
an adequate guide to a conclusion. 

It will not be denied that the products of material or- 
ganisms can be proved to consist of matter and of nothing 
else. Their presence can be detected by some physical 
test. For example, if it be true that all animals have been 
evolved from protoplasm, the organisms are simply changes 
in the form of a certain portion of matter. If, in an indi- 
vidual organism having a highly developed nervous struct- 
ure, there are actions produced by an excitation of the 
nerves of sensation, those actions are simply molecular 
changes in the matter comprising the sensitive and easily 
moved substance of the nerve-fibers. However far and into 
whatever minutiae we carry our investigations into organized 
matter, we find that its products remain material, and that 



50S CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

they consist only of changes in the material substance of a 
material organization. But, when we pass from such material 
products into the domain of purely mental phenomena, are 
we warranted in saying that, although the latter are not, 
properly speaking, products of the material organization, 
they are effects corresponding to and dependent upon the 
excitation of the nerves of sensation ? This last hypothesis 
must assume one of two things : either that there is a dis- 
tinction between those corporeal feelings which do not and 
those which do produce mental changes or mental effects, 
or, if there are corporeal feelings which produce corre- 
sponding mental states and mental action, there must be a 
something on which the effects can be wrought, and this 
something must be an independent organism. It is doubt- 
less true that there are many corporeal feelings which are 
followed by no yery important mental effects, especially 
during a sound state of bodily health. But it is equally 
true that, if there are corporeal feelings which influence our 
mental action, there must be an organism which is capable 
of being so influenced ; and our experience and conscious- 
ness teach us that there is such a difference between cor- 
poreal feelings and mental phenomena that the probability 
of a difference in the originating causes becomes yery great. 
We know that the mind can and does act with great force 
when bodily suffering is extreme ; that it has an energy of 
its own which enables it to rise aboye all the power of phys- 
ical pain to restrain or influence it. I must therefore fol- 
low out, as I had originally projected, my anatomical 
analysis of the mind as an independent spiritual organism. 
In order to arrive at a correct conclusion concerning 
the structure of mind, we must first observe that there are 
four special corporeal organs by which the capability of the 
mind to receive impressions from matter is acted upon. It 
is through these means that the properties of matter, or 
those properties which can make themselves known to us. 



CONSCIOUSNESS. 503 

become known to us. The senses, as they are usually 
called, are sight, hearing, smell, and taste. The external 
organ of each of these senses is furnished with a set of 
nerves, the function of which is to transmit from that or- 
gan a wave of molecular motion along the fluid or semi- 
fluid substance inclosed in the nerve-tubes to the great 
nerve-center the brain, the central recipient of all such 
motions. Such, at least, is the theory, which may be ac- 
cepted as a fact. But, then, the question remains. What 
is the intellectual perception or mental cognition of the 
idea suggested by one of these supposed transmissions of a 
wave of molecular motion ? Is there a being, a person, a 
spiritual entity, conceiving the idea or having an intel- 
lectual perception of it ? Or is there no such being, and 
while we attribute to the office of the nervous system the 
function of producing certain feelings or sensations in the 
brain, do these sensations or feelings constitute all that 
there is of consciousness ? 

It is impossible for me to conceive of consciousness as 
anything but an intuitive sense of his own existence, ex- 
perienced by a being capable of such an experience, because 
endowed with such a faculty. It is certain that when we 
so regard consciousness we are not deceiving ourselves ; for 
if any one will consider what would happen to him if he 
should lose this faculty of being sensible of his own exist- 
ence, he will see that in the event of that loss he could 
neither distinguish himself from other persons, nor have 
any control over his own actions, or any cognition what- 
ever. For this reason, the theory on which I made some 
criticisms in one of our late conversations is the one with 
which I contrast my conception of mind. If that theory 
fails to satisfy a reflecting person in regard to the nature 
of consciousness, as certified to him by his own experience, 
the hypothesis that the mind is an extended and organized 
being, of which a conception can be formed, and not an 



504 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

unextended and unorganized something of whicli no con- 
ception can be formed, must be accepted as the alterna- 
tive. 

I explained in our former discussion my understanding 
of Mr. Spencer's theory of the only ego that can be scien- 
tifically recognized ; and, in order to encounter it by my 
own hypothesis, I will here restate its substantial position 
in a condensed form. 

By the ego of which he treats, I understand him to 
mean all that we can arriye at by an analysis of what takes 
place in the body and its functions, and of "what is given 
in consciousness." This phrase — "what is given in con- 
sciousness "—reveals to us his purpose to reduce conscious- 
ness from a self-conviction and cognition of one's own 
existence to a mere passing group of feelings, which con- 
stitute "the ever-changing states of consciousness" that 
we ''call mind." So that, when we speak of mind, we 
mean and can mean nothing more than certain states of 
feeling produced in our brains by perpetually changing im- 
pressions. We do not and can not mean that there is 
a person who perceives and holds ideas suggested by ex- 
ternal objects through the action of his nervous system. 
All that we know about any ego, any mental I, is that there 
is a physical structure, pervaded by certain physical forces, 
that produce " consecutive states," which Mr. Spencer calls 
" mental states " ; and the aggregate of the feelings and ideas 
which thus constitute the mental states is the only ego of 
which any continued existence can be predicated. But even 
these aggregates of feelings and ideas have, according to 
this philosopher, no principle of cohesion holding them to- 
gether as a whole ; and, therefore, all that we can assume as 
having any continuously surviving and durable existence is 
the changing states produced by the action through us of a 
certain unknowable power, statically conditioned in our 
nervous organism, which is pervaded by a dynamically con- 



AUTOMATIC MACHINES. 505 

ditioned portion of that unknowable power wMcti is op- 
erating everjrwhere in nature, and is called "energy."* 
So far as this theory is based upon the existence of a 
physical organism, whose functions liberate from the food 
supplied to it certain forces, which are distributed by the 
activities of the organism, we may accept it as a statement 
of what actually takes place in the form of physical phe- 
nomena. But when we follow the physical phenomena of 
the diffused energy into its action upon the brain, by the 
transmission of an impulse, we must stop with the effect of 
that impulse upon a corporeal organ, or we must go further 
and find a something which receives into itself and appro- 
priates to itself the idea the elements of which the impulse 
has transmitted. The presence of that something in our- 
selves may be illustrated by its absence from a mechanism in 
which we know that it does not exist, but which appears 
superficially to be animated by an intelligent principle pos- 
sessing volition. We stand, for example, before one of those 
automatic machines which perform actions that seem to be 
guided by a living spirit. They are mere physical organ- 
isms, constructed without the principle of life that inhab- 
its animal organisms, but they are so admirably contrived 
for the production of certain limited but complex movements 
that they suggest the presence of a spiritual being acting 
as we ourselves act. But the least reflection upon what 
we see makes us aware that there is nothing before us but 
a mechanical organism, in which the artisan who made it 
has availed himself of certain forces of nature and proper- 
ties of matter, whereby he uses a portion of the energy that 
pervades the universe. There is nothing within the ma- 
chine to which this energy communicates ideas tliat are to 



* When the unknowable power ceases to pulsate through our physical 
organism, this "mental state" ceases — nothing survives — continuity is 
ended. 



506 CREATIOIsr OR EVOLUTION? 

be the subject of its future voluntary operation. All is 
comprehended in a fixed mechanical operation of certain 
machinery, and, when we have analyzed and understood the 
physical phenomena, we can follow them no further, be- 
cause there is no translation of the physical energy into 
mental phenomena. But in ourselves there is such a 
translation, and we must follow it into the mental phe- 
nomena. So following it, we find ourselves in the presence 
of a something which has a self-conscious individuality, 
and which, by a mysterious bond of connection, is so 
united with a physical organism that it is capable of re- 
ceiving, appropriating, and preserving the ideas which the 
physical organism was designed to produce in it. 

My objection to Mr. Spencer's system of psychology 
may be summed up in what I shall now say upon his chief 
position, which is that "an idea is the psychical side of 
what, on its physical side, is an involved set of molecular 
changes, propagated through an involved set of nervous 
plexuses." Translated into what I take to be his meaning, 
the assertion, or hypothesis, is this : An idea is the men- 
tal cognition of an external object, as, for example, a tree. 
When we are looking at or thinking of a tree, we have a 
mental cognition of a tree ; and this idea of a tree is said 
to be the psychical side of that which on its physical side 
has been transmitted to our brain by molecular changes 
through our visual nerves. The idea of the tree is the 
psychical correlative of a wave of molecular motion dif- 
fused through our organs of vision ; and the conception of 
a tree thus becomes a possible conception. But why did 
not the learned philosopher follow the wave of molecular 
motion until he found the impression of the object which 
the visual organs have transmitted to the brain, or the 
nerve-center, translated into a thought by an intelligent 
being, capable, by its own organization, of having that 
thought ? Why does he speak of an idea as the psychical 



TKANSMUTATIOJT OF PHYSICAL IMPRESSIONS. 507 

side of what, on its physical side, is one and the same 
thing ? Obviously, because he meant to ignore the psychical 
or mental existence as an independent existence, or as any 
existence at all. Now, there is no way in which the psy- 
chical side and the physical side can be bridged over, ex- 
cepting by the hyjDothesis that the mind is an entity of 
a peculiar nature, different in structure from the bodily 
organism, but capable, by the connection between them, 
of receiving and transmuting into thought the impressions 
which the waves of molecular motion transmit to the brain 
from the external object. To say that the set of plexuses, 
or networks, which hold together the waves of molecular 
motion, constitute the potentiality of the idea and make 
possible future ideas like it, explains nothing. The poten- 
tiality of the idea, or the possibility of ideas like it, de- 
pends upon the existence of a something which is capa- 
ble of conceiving the idea, holding it, and reproducing it 
to itself, after the waves of molecular motion cease. I call 
this a process of translation, or transmutation, because 
there is no other convenient term for it. It is a process 
analogous to the physical assimilation of food by the or- 
gans of physical digestion, with this difference, however, 
that the action of the mental organism in the assimilation 
of ideas is the action of a spiritual and intellectual organ- 
ism upon materials that are brought within its reach by the 
means of communication with the external world afforded 
by the physical senses and the nervous system. The image 
of the tree produced upon the retina of the eye by the lines 
of light that proceed from every point of that object is the 
food which the mind assimilates and transmutes into the 
idea of the tree ; and this may remain as a permanent 
mental perception or cognition, although the object itself 
may have been seen but once. If seen many times, the 
various aspects in which it has been seen are transmuted 
into so many distinct ideas. If many kinds of trees, of 
23 



508 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

different stapes and dimensions, have been seen, the varie- 
ties become a part of our consciousness in the several de- 
grees of their precise resemblances and differences which 
we happen to have observed, when the different impressions 
were produced upon the retina. Can there be any doubt 
that this is the process by which the infant begins to ac- 
quire ideas of external objects, and that, as adolescence goes 
on and the powers of sense expand with the growth and 
exercise of the physical organs, there is a corresponding 
growth and expansion of the mental powers ? 

This hypothesis of the progress of mental growth, parts 
passibus with the growth of the physical organism, brings 
me to the consideration of one of those specimens of Mr. 
Spencer's peculiar logic, in a passage in which he under- 
takes to disprove the existence of mind as anything more 
than what he calls the psychical side of physical impres- 
sions. He is treating of the impossibility of our ** know- 
ing " anything about the substance of mind ; and he pro- 
pounds this impossibility in the following logical formula : 

... To know anything is to distinguish it as such or such — to 
class it as of this or that order. An object is said to be but little 
known when it is alien to objects of which we have had experience ; 
and it is said to be well known when there is great community of 
attributes between it and objects of which we have had experience. 
Hence, by implication, an object is completely known when this 
recognized community is complete ; and completely unknown when 
there is no recognized community at all. Manifestly, then, the 
smallest conceivable degree of knowledge implies at least two things 
between which some community is recognized. But, if so, how can 
we know the substance of mind? To know the substance of mind 
is to be conscious of some community between it and some other 
substance. If, with the idealist, we say that there exists no other 
substance, then, necessarily, as there is nothing with which the 
substance of mind can be even compared, much less assimilated, it 
remains unknown ; while, if we hold with the realist that being 
is fundamentally divisible into that which is present to us as mind, 



SUBSTANCE OF THE MIND. 509 

and that which, lying outside of it, is not mind, then, as this propo- 
sition itself asserts a diiference and not a likeness, it is equally clear 
that mind remains unclassable and therefore unknowable. 

The answer to this supposed insuperable dilemma may 
be made by determining what we mean when we speak of 
knowing a thing. Definition of knowing is here essential, 
and the first inquiry we have to make is whether, in order 
to know mind, it is necessary to find and recognize some 
community between the substance. of mind and some other 
substance ? The statement is, on the one hand, that there 
exists no other substance with which the substance of 
mind can be compared, much less assimilated, and there- 
fore there is no aid to be deriyed from resemblance ; or, on 
the other hand, that, if being is fundamentally diyisible 
into something which is mind and something which is not 
mind, we depend for a knowledge of mind on a difference, 
and not on a likeness, and we have no means of knowing 
that difference. Upon either proposition, mind remains 
unclassable and therefore unknowable. 

It may be conceded that our knowledge of the proper- 
ties and forms of matter consists in recognizing a commu- 
nity or a difference between things which belong to the 
same class, so that there is a comparison between things 
which are of the same substance. But what is to prevent 
us from classifying the substance of mind, when the funda- 
mental idea of its substance is that it is something which 
resembles no other substance, but constitutes a class or 
description of being that stands entirely by itself, and in 
which, for a knowledge of its properties we distinguish its 
properties from those of any other substance ? The only 
difficulty that arises here springs from the fact that we 
have but one word — substance — by which to speak of the 
two existences that we call mind and matter ; just as we 
can only speak of an organism when we speak of the natu- 
ral body and the spiritual body. But this use of the same 



510 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

term to express things whicli in our consciousness stand 
fundamentally opposed to each other does not prevent us 
from discriminating between the means by which we be- 
come conscious of the two things, or from classifying the 
knowledge which we haye of mind as something distinct 
from the knowledge which we have of matter. 

We must discriminate between the means by which the 
properties of matter become known to us and the means by 
which the properties of mind become known to us. In 
both cases there is knowledge, but it is knowledge of a 
different kind ; it is obtained by different means ; and we 
must therefore recognize a fundamental difference between 
the substance of mind and the substance of matter. It is 
true that our knowledge of the properties of matter and 
our knowledge of the properties of mind are alike in this, 
that in both cases it is knowledge by one and the same per- 
son ; but the distinction is that, in the one case, I have 
knowledge of objects external to myself, and, in the other 
case, I have knowledge of myself as the person possessing 
knowledge of external objects. The knowledge that we 
have of ourselves is what most persons mean by con- 
sciousness, and it is what we should scientifically under- 
stand by that term, although consciousness is often used as 
synonymous with mental cognition of things external to 
ourselves, and as cognition of ourselves also. 

I shall now quote from the chapter in which Mr. Spen- 
cer makes a special synthesis of reason, and in which he 
denies the existence of the commonly assumed hiatus be- 
tween reason and instinct, maintaining that the former is 
the continuation of the latter, because, as he thinks, the 
highest forms of psychical activity arise little by little out 
of the lowest and can not be separated from them. The 
passage which I shall now analyze is this : 

"Here seems to be the fittest place for pointing out 
how the general doctrine that has been developed supplies 



< 



SPEJfCER'S THEORY OF MIND. 611 

a reconciliation; between the experience-hypothesis as com- 
monly interpreted and the hypothesis which the transcen- 
dentalists oppose to it. 

'^ The universal law, that, other things equal, the cohe- 
sion of psychical states is proportionate to the frequency 
with which they have followed one another in experience, 
supplies an explanation of the so-called 'forms of thought,' 
as soon as it is supplemented by the law that habitual psy- 
chical successions entail some hereditary tendency to such 
successions, which, under persistent conditions, will become 
cumulative in generation after generation. We saw that 
the establishment of those compound reflex actions called 
instincts is comprehensible on the principle that inner re- 
lations are, by perpetual repetition, organized into corre- 
spondence with otiter relations. We have now to observe 
that the establishment of those consolidated, those indis- 
soluble, those instinctive mental relations constituting our 
ideas of space and time, is comprehensible on the same 
principle. 

''For, if, even to external relations that are often expe- 
rienced during the life of a single organism, answering in- 
ternal relations are established that become next to auto- 
matic — if such a combination of psychical changes as that 
which guides a savage in hitting a bird with an arrow 
becomes, by constant repetition, so organized as to be per- 
formed almost without thought of the processes of adjust- 
ment gone through — and if skill of this kind is so far trans- 
missible that particular races of men become characterized 
by particular aptitudes, which are nothing else than partially 
organized psychical connections ; then, if there exist certain 
external relations which are experienced by all organisms 
at all instants of their waking lives — relations which are 
absolutely constant, absolutely universal — there will be es- 
tablished answering internal relations that are absolutely 
constant, absolutely universal. Such relations we have in 



312 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

those of space and time. The organization of subjective 
relations adjusted to these objectiye relations has been cumu- 
lative, not in each race of creatures only, but throughout 
successive races of creatures ; and such subjective relations 
have, therefore, become more consolidated than all others. 
Being experienced in every perception and every action of 
each creature, these connections among outer existences 
must, for this reason, too, be responded to by connections 
among inner feelings that are, above all others, indissolu- 
ble. As the substrata of all other relations in the non-ego, 
they must be responded to by conceptions that are the sub- 
strata of all other relations in the ego. Being the constant 
and infinitely repeated elements of thought, they must be- 
come the automatic elements of thought — the elements of 
thought which it is impossible to get rid *of — the ' forms of 
intuition.' 

" Such, it seems to me, is the only possible reconciliation 
between the experience-hypothesis and the hypothesis of 
the transcendentalists, neither of which is tenable by itself. 
Insurmountable difificulties are presented by the Kantian 
doctrine (as we shall hereafter see) ; and the antagonist 
doctrine, taken alone, presents difficulties that are equally 
insurmountable. To rest with the unqualified assertion 
that, antecedent to experience, the mind is a blank, is to 
ignore the questions : Whence comes the power of organ- 
izing experiences ? Whence arise the different degrees of 
that power possessed by different races of organisms, and 
different individuals of the same race ? If, at birth, there 
exists nothing but a passive receptivity of impressions, why 
is not a horse as educable as a man ? Should it be said 
that language makes the difference, then why do not the 
cat and the dog, reared in the same household, arrive at 
equal degrees and kinds of intelligence ? Understood in 
its current form, the experience-hypothesis implies that 
the presence of a definitely organized nervous system is a 



SPENCER'S THEORY OF MIND. 513 

circumstance of no moment — a fact not needing to be taken 
into account ! Yet it is the all-important fact — the fact to 
which, in one sense, the criticisms of Leibnitz and others 
pointed — the fact without which an assimilation of experi- 
ences is inexplicable. 

'* Throughout the animal kingdom in general the actions 
are dependent on the nervous structure. The physiologist 
shows us that each reflex moyement implies the agency of 
certain nerves and ganglia ; that a development of compli- 
cated instincts is accompanied by complication of the nerv- 
ous centers and their commissural connections ; that the 
same creature in different stages, as larva and imago, for 
example, changes its instincts as its nervous structure 
changes ; and that, as we advance to creatures of high in- 
telligence, a vast increase in the size and in the complexity 
of the nervous system takes place. What is the obvious 
inference ? It is that the ability to co-ordinate impressions 
and to perform the appropriate actions always implies the 
pre-existence of certain nerves arranged in a certain way. 
What is the meaning of the human brain ? It is that the 
many established relations among its parts stand for so many 
estaUislied relations among the psychical changes. Each 
of the constant connections among the fibers of the cerebral 
masses answers to some constant connection of phenomena 
in the experiences of the race. Just as the organized ar- 
rangement subsisting between the sensory nerves of the 
nostrils and the motor nerves of the respiratory muscles 
not only makes possible a sneeze, but also, in the newly 
born infant, implies sneezings to be hereafter performed, 
so, all the organized arrangements subsisting among the 
nerves of the infant's brain not only make possible certain 
combinations of impressions, but also imply that such com- 
binations will hereafter be made, imply that there are an- 
swering combinations in the outer world, imply a prepared- 
ness to cognize these combinations, imjily faculties of 



514 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

comprehending them. It is true that the resulting com- 
pound psychical changes do not take place with the same 
readiness and automatic precision as the simple reflex action 
instanced ; it is true that some individual experiences seem 
required to establish them. But, while this is partly due 
to the fact that these combinations are highly involved, ex- 
tremely varied in their modes of occurrence, made up, there- 
fore, of psychical relations less completely coherent, and 
hence need further repetitions to perfect them, it is in a 
much greater degree due to the fact that at birth the or- 
ganization of the brain is incomplete, and does not cease 
its spontaneous progress for twenty or thirty years after- 
ward. Those who contend that knowledge results wholly 
from the experiences of the individual, ignoring as they do 
the mental evolution which accompanies the autogenous 
development of the nervous system, fall into an error as 
great as if they were to ascribe all bodily growth and struct- 
ure to exercise, forgetting the innate tendency to assume 
the adult form. Were the infant born with a full-sized and 
completely constructed brain, their position would be less 
untenable. But, as the case stands, the gradually increas- 
ing intelligence displayed throughout childhood and youth 
is more attributable to the completion of the cerebral or- 
ganization than to the individual experiences — a truth 
proved by the fact that in adult life there is sometimes dis- 
played a high endowment of some faculty which, during 
education, was never brought into play. Doubtless, expe- 
riences received by the individual furnish the concrete ma- 
terials for all thought. Doubtless, the organized and semi- 
organized arrangements existing among the cerebral nerves 
can give no knowledge until there has been a presentation 
of the external relations to which they correspond. And, 
doubtless, the child's daily observations and reasonings aid 
the formation of those involved nervous connections that 
are in process of spontaneous evolution, just as its daily 



SPEITCER'S THEORY OF MIND. 515 

gambols aid the development of its limbs. But saying this 
is quite a different thing from saying that its intelligence is 
wholly produced by its experiences. That is an utterly in- 
admissible doctrine — a doctrine which makes the presence 
of a brain meaningless — a doctrine which makes idiotcy 
unaccountable. 

*^ In the sense, then, that there exist in the nervous sys- 
tem certain pre-established relations answering to relations 
in the environment, there is truth in the doctrine of 
^ forms of intuition' — not the truth which its defenders 
suppose, but a parallel truth. Corresponding to absolute 
external relations, there are established in the structure 
of the nervous system absolute internal relations — relations 
that are potentially present before birth in the shape of 
definite nervous connections, that are antecedent to, and 
independent of, individual experiences, and that are auto- 
matically disclosed along with the first cognitions. And, 
as here understood, it is not only these fundamental rela- 
tions which are thus predetermined, but also hosts of other 
relations of a more or less constant kind, which are con- 
genitally represented by more or less complete nervous 
connections. But these predetermined internal relations, 
though independent of the experiences of the individual, 
are not independent of experiences in general ; they have 
been determined by the experiences of preceding organisms. 
The corollary here drawn from the general argument is 
that the human brain is an organized register of infinitely 
numerous experiences received during the evolution of life, 
or, rather, during the evolution of that series of organisms 
through which the human organism has been reached. 
The effects of the most uniform and frequent of these ex- 
periences have been successively bequeathed, principal and 
interest ; and have slowly amounted to that high intelli- 
gence which lies latent in the brain of the infant — which 
the infant in after-life exercises and perhaps strengthens 



516 OREATIOis^ OR EVOLUTIOJ^? 

or further complicates, and which, with minute additions, 
it bequeaths to future generations ; and thus it happens 
that the European inherits from twenty to thirty cubic 
inches more brain than the Papuan. Thus it happens that 
faculties, as of music, which scarcely exist in some inferior 
human races, become congenital in superior ones. Thus it 
happens that out of savages unable to count up to the 
number of their fingers, and speaking a language contain- 
ing only nouns and yerbs, arise at length our Newtons and 
Shakespeares." * 

The learned philosopher has here dealt with two hy- 
potheses, neither of which he considers tenable by itself. 
The first is that the individual mind, anterior to expe- 
rience, is a blank ; that at birth there exists nothing but a 
passive receptivity of impressions, which become organized 
into intelligence by experience. The other hypothesis is 
that of the transcendental school, which attributes the 
growth of intelligence wholly to implanted intuitions, 
which become expanded by the increase of mental power. 
His argument is put thus : If at birth the mind of the in- 
dividual is a blank, and it becomes capable of thought or 
possessed of intelligence by experience, beginning with a 
passive receptivity of impressions, and going on to their 
organization into intelligence by the repetition of experi- 
ences and their increasing complexity — why, he asks, is 
not a horse as educable as a man ? Why do not the cat 
and the dog, reared in the same household and hearing 
human beings use language every moment of their lives, 
arrive at equal degrees and kinds of intelligence ? In the 
first place, as a matter of fact, many animals are educable 
beyond their natural capacity of intelligence, or beyond the 
point at which they would arrive without such education, 
to a very remarkable degree. I have heard a credible de- 

* "Principles of Psychology," i, § 208, pp. 465-471. 



SPENCER CEITICISED. 517 

scription of a dog which would ascend to a chamber and 
bring down an article that he had been told to bring. 
Many repetitions of the command and the performance had 
taught the animal to associate the name of the article which 
he was to bring down with the act which he was to per- 
form. While I am writing, a bear beneath my window is 
going through performances, at the word of command, 
of yery considerable varieties ; actions which he would not 
do if he had not been trained to do them. The trained 
war-horse knows the meaning of the different airs played 
on the bugle upon the battle-field or the parade-ground, 
and instantly charges or wheels about, without waiting to 
be prompted by the bit or the spur. Insects can be trained, 
to some extent, in the same way ; birds to a much greater 
extent. Is the explanation of these capacities to be found 
in a definitely organized nervous system as the all-impor- 
tant fact without which an assimilation of experiences is 
inexplicable ? Grant that, as we advance from creatures of 
very low to creatures of very high intelligence, we find a 
vast increase in the size and complexity of the nervous sys- 
tem taking place through the series, until we arrive at its 
highest and most complex development in man. What is 
the hypothesis which explains the difference in mental 
power between man and all the other creatures below him 
in the capability of co-ordinating impressions and perform- 
ing the appropriate actions ? It is, according to Mr. Spen- 
cer, that the capability implies the existence of certain 
nerves arranged in a certain way ; that where this arrange- 
ment does not exist the capability is not found ; and where 
it exists in only a low degree the capability exists only in the 
same degree. As two parallel and concurring facts these 
may be conceded. But why are not these facts entirely 
consistent with another hypothesis, namely, that to each 
creature, along with its specially organized nervous system, 
there has been given by divine appointment a certain de- 



518 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

gree of innate mental power, to explain which we must 
follow the impressions produced in the nervous system into 
their transmutation into intelligence, until we arrive at the 
limit of that intelligence ? Mr. Spencer's answer to this 
inquiry is twofold: first, that the experience-hypothesis, 
in the case of the individual creature, or the constant repe- 
tition of the impressions and the appropriate actions, is 
insufficient to account for what takes place, without recog- 
nizing the fact that the actions are dependent on the nerv- 
ous structure, without which the impressions would not be 
followed by the actions ; second, that the nervous structure 
in the different races of animals has come to be what it is in 
each race by gradual modifications and increments through 
the process of evolution of organisms out of one another, 
and that these accumulations have resulted in the human 
brain, which has the highest power of co-ordinating the 
impressions and performing the appropriate actions. Then 
he puts, with an air of final solution, the question, *^ What 
is the human brain ? " which he answers in his own way. 

His mode of answering this question is that the brain 
is an organ with established relations among its parts, which 
stand for so many established relations among the psychical 
changes. I understand this to mean, that as the human 
brain, in the process of animal evolution, has come to have 
certain constant connections among the fibers of the cere- 
bral masses, each of these connections answers to some con- 
stant connection of phenomena in the experiences of the 
race. His corollary is that the human brain is an organized 
register of infinitely numerous experiences received by the 
race during the evolution of life, or during the evolution of 
that series of organisms through which the human organ- 
ism has been reached. Each infant of the human race, to 
whom has descended this improved and perfect brain, has 
latent in that organ a high capacity for intelligence. This 
it begins to exercise and strengthen and further compli- 



VOLUME OF BRAIN. 519 

cate as life goes on, and at the end of twenty or thirty years 
the individual brain is fully developed, and this develop- 
ment, or capacity for development, the individual be- 
queaths with minute additions, principal and interest, to 
future generations. In different races of men the cubic 
bulk of the brain varies greatly, according to the size trans- 
mitted from ancestors ; and so certain faculties which 
scarcely exist in some races become congenital in others ; and 
whereas the remote ancestors of all of us were savages, inca- 
pable even of conceiving of numbers, and possessing but 
the rudest elements of language, there have at length arisen 
our Newtons and Shakespeares. 

This hypothesis leads me to ask a question and to state 
a fact. The question is. What is it in the infant of the 
most developed and cultivated race that constitutes the 
high intelligence which is said to lie latent in his brain ? 
In other words, is there nothing in that infant, or in the 
adult which he becomes, but a brain and a nervous system 
of a highly organized and complex physical structure adapted 
to receive impressions on itself from without ? Are the expe- 
riences which have been enjoyed by the progenitors of the 
human infant or by preceding organisms registered in his 
brain, and is his capacity of intelligence dependent on his 
having inherited the same or nearly the same volume of 
brain as that which was possessed by his progenitors ? And 
does the intelligence consist, in degree or in kind, in noth- 
ing but a repetition of the same experiences as those 
through which his progenitors were carried, or is there a 
something in him to which his individual experiences con- 
tribute the mental food by which the mind is nourished 
and by the assimilation of which its individual intellectual 
growth becomes possible ? 

It is not necessary to question the fact that individuals 
of great intellect, the Newtons and the Shakespeares, have 
had or may have had large brains ; or the fact that, as be- 



520 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

tween races of men, the most intelligent have brains of 
greater cubic measure than the less intelligent. But it has 
not always been found that individuals of superior intellect 
have had comparatively larger brains than other individu- 
als, nor that those who have had very large brains have 
transmitted them to their children. The important fact 
to which I meant to advert is that, since we have known 
much about the human brain and the nervous system con- 
nected with it, it has not been found that, in its several 
parts and in the action of the nerves connected with it, it 
has been differently organized and acted upon in the lowest 
savages from what we know of it in the European and the 
most civilized races. There is a difference in volume, but 
not in the organization or the office of the brain in differ- 
ent races of men, as there is in different individuals of the 
same race. The fact that all men, since they became a 
completed type of animal, however they originated and be- 
came men, have possessed a capacity to become in different 
degrees intelligent and thinking beings, points strongly to 
the conclusion that while in each individual there is a nerv- 
ous system so organized as to transmit impressions from ex- 
ternal objects to the central physical organ called the brain, 
there must be another existence in that individual, of a 
spiritual and intellectual nature, of a substance that is 
not physical, to which the brain supplies the materials of 
thought, thought being mental cognition of an idea. If I 
am asked for the proof of such an existence, I answer that 
the proo'f is consciousness, as I define it, and this I con- 
ceive is the highest kind of proof. 

One may appeal to the convictions of mankind for an 
answer to the question, What is the highest and most satis- 
factory kind of knowledge that any of us possess ? The 
most intelligent man may be mistaken in that part of self- 
knowledge that relates to his own character or motives. 
Others may see him very differently from the light in which 



ANATOMY OF THE MIND. 621 

he sees himself, and they may be right and he may be 
wrong. He may think, too, that he knows a great deal 
that he does not know ; but no intelligent man is mistaken 
or in any way deluded when he believes in his own exist- 
ence. No man in his waking moments and in his right 
mind ever confounded his own identity, as we have seen 
that Lady Macbeth did when she was walking in her sleep, 
with the identity of another person. No man in his right 
mind loses the constant, ever-present sense of himself as 
a being and as one distinct from all other beings. The 
reason is that his own existence is certified to him by the 
most unerring of witnesses. One who can not lie, because 
the fact of one's own existence is the fact of which that 
witness must speak. Of all other facts the witness may 
speak falsely. The mind can not speak falsely when it 
speaks to us of our own existence, for the witness who speaks 
and the person spoken to are one and the same. The false- 
hood, if there could be a falsehood, would be instantly de- 
tected. 

As the mind certifies to itself its own existence by the 
most direct and the highest kind of proof, so it certifies to 
itself the powers with which it is endowed ; and this brings 
me to the anatomical examination of the structure of the 
mind. I shall not make this analysis a very minute one, 
but shall confine it to those distinct elementary powers 
which are constituted by systems, as the powers of the 
bodily organism are constituted by systems distinguishable 
by the functions which they perform. In the bodily or- 
ganism we recognize the digestive system, the system of 
circulation of the blood, the muscular system, the nervous 
system, the sensory system, which is distributed into the dif- 
ferent organs of sense, the male and female systems of sex- 
ual generation, and the female system of gestation. These 
several systems, acting together as one complex mechanism 
endowed with the mysterious principle of life, form in each 



522 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

human being of either sex the physical existence of the in- 
diyidual. Acting in each individual of either sex simul- 
taneously and with mutual involved interdependencies, 
they form a whole which, in its several parts and their 
functions, may be likened to the several parts and functions 
in one of those machines which we ourselves construct — 
with this difference, however, that in one life is present 
and in the other it is not. The fundamental question is 
whether this complex animal mechanism, thus constituted 
of certain physical systems, also constitutes during this life 
the entire individual. If so, the individual existence is a 
unit, and, when the physical organism perishes by what we 
call death, the individual existence ceases. If, on the con- 
trary, we have satisfactory proof that there is, during this 
life, in each individual an organized and extended entity, 
composed, like the systems of the bodily organisms, of certain 
systems of its own but of a substance that is not material, 
then the existence of each individual is a dual existence ; 
and one of the two existences now associated and acting to- 
gether may be dissolved into its original material elements, 
while the other, composed of a different substance, may be 
indissoluble and have an endless life. There is no middle 
ground that I can perceive between these two hypotheses. 
One or the other of them is absolutely true, independent 
of the inquiry as to the mode in which mind came to ex- 
ist ; for after going through with all the reasoning and all 
the proofs that are supposed to show its origin by the pro- 
cess called evolution, we must still come back to the ques- 
tion of what mind is after it has come into existence ; must 
determine on which side lies the preponderating probability 
of its continuance after the death of the body ; and must 
accept the conclusion of its destruction or cessation when 
the body dies, or the other conclusion that it is unlike the 
body in its substance, and therefore indestructible by the 
means which destroy the body. For this reason we must 



MENTAL SYSTEMS. 523 

examine the mind for proof that it is an organism of a spe- 
cial nature because composed of a special substance, and 
this proof is to be reached by an analysis of the systems of 
which the mind is composed. I select, of course, for the 
purposes of this analysis, any individual whose physical and 
mental faculties have had the average development into the 
condition that is called a sound mind in a sound body — 
mens sana in corpore sano. I shall treat incidentally of 
the condition of idiocy. 

"We may classify the distinct systems of the mind, with 
their several functions, as easily as we can classify the dis- 
tinct systems of our physical structure and their functions. 
I have seen the systems of the mind distributed into five ; 
and although I do not adopt the whole analysis made by 
the writer to whom I refer, or make use of the same ter- 
minology, I shall follow his classification because it is 
one which any thinking person must recognize as a descrip- 
tion of mental powers of which he is conscious.* We are 
all aware that we possess the following mental systems in 
which inhere certain elementary powers that are mental 
powers : 

1. A sensory system, by which the mind takes impres- 
sions from matter. 

2. A system of intellectual faculties, such as reason, 
imagination, reflection, combination of ideas, discrimina- 
tion between different ideas. 

3. A system of emotions, or susceptibilities to pleasure 
or pain, of a moral and intellectual nature as distinguished 
from the pleasurable or painful excitation of our nerves. 

4. A system of desires, which prompt us to wish for 
and acquire some good, or to avoid some evil. 

5. A system of affections, which prompt us to like or 

* I have allowed Sophereus to follow in the main the writer to whom I 
have already referred in the note on page 471 — Mr. Bishop, of Florida. 



524 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

dislike persons, things, situations, and whateTer is attract- 
ive or unattractive, as the case may be. 

A little further analysis of each of these systems will 
explain why they are respectively to be thus classified as 
distinguishable organic powers or functions of the human 
mind : 

First. The mind is placed as a recipient in correspond- 
ence with the material universe through the nerves of sen- 
sation and the special corporeal organs, whereby the prop- 
erties of matter become to some extent known to us. As 
the power of the physical senses to obtain for us a knowl- 
edge of the properties of matter is limited, even when our 
senses are in the utmost state of their normal capacity, 
there may be properties of matter which will never become 
known to us in our present existence. But certain of its 
properties do become known to us, and we are perfectly 
aware that this takes place through our physical organs of 
sense, which convey to our mental reception certain impres- 
sions. This power of the mind, therefore, to receive such 
impressions, to retain and transmute them into thought, is 
to be recognized as a power exerted by means of an organic 
physical contrivance and an organic mental structure, the 
two acting together, the resultant being the mind's faculty 
for receiving ideas from the external world. Let us sup- 
pose, then, that the bodily senses are impaired by the par- 
tial destruction of their organs. It does not follow that 
the knowledge which has been derived from them, when 
they were in full activity, is destroyed ; all that happens 
is that we acquire no more of such knowledge by the same 
means, or do not acquire it so readily and completely. If 
the destruction of the physical senses is so complete as it be- 
comes when death of the whole body takes place, the mate- 
rials derived from the impressions conveyed to the mind 
from external objects during life have been transmuted 
into ideas and thoughts, and, as that which holds the ideas 



MEITTAL SYSTEMS. 525 

and the thouglits is of a substance unlike in nature to the 
substance of the physical organs which conveyed the im- 
pressions, the rational conclusion is that the ideas and 
thoughts will continue to be held by it, after the dissolu- 
tion of the body, as they were held while the body was in 
full life. 

Second, I recognize in the mind a system of intellect- 
ual faculties. Of intellect, I should say that the ascer- 
tainment of truth is its primary function ; and hence I 
should say that the power of retaining permanent posses- 
sion of truth already ascertained is the means by which we 
maintain continued ascertainment, or the utilization of 
truth already ascertained.* Eor the exercise of this power 
of ascertaining, holding, applying, and expressing truth — 
the processes of intellect — we have three recognized faculties. 
These are the intuitive faculty ; the faculty of association 
or combination ; and the introspective faculty, or the ca- 
pacity to look inward upon the processes of our own minds. 
The philosophers who maintain that all our knowledge is 
derived from experience admit neither the intuitive fac- 
ulty nor the fact of intuition. On the other hand, the 
philosophers who maintain, as Mr. Spencer does, that the 
brain of every infant is an organized register of the experi- 
ences of his ancestors, do not allow of the existence of any 
intuitions as facts in the individual life of the infant, be- 
cause they regard the individual experiences of the infant 
as mere repetitions of former experiences that took place in 
its progenitors. But rightly regarded the true meaning 
of the intuitive faculty is this : that at the instant when a 
new sensory impression is received by the infant, or the 
adult, there is an innate and implanted power which comes 
into play, by which is asserted the reality of that from 
which the sensory impression is received. This power, the 

* Bishop. 



526 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

intuitive faculty, is infallible. It was ordained as the 
means by which a sensory impression becomes to us a real- 
ity. We are so constructed, mentally, that we must be- 
lieve those primary facts which the sensory impressions 
certify to us to be facts. On the veracity of this certifica- 
tion we are absolutely dependent, because we can not con- 
tradict the affirmations of reality which causation makes 
to our intuitive mental perceptions. On this veracity we 
risk our lives ; we could not be safe if we were not sub- 
jected to this belief. Intuition, therefore, is something 
anterior to experience ; it is that power by which the first 
experience and the last become to us the means of belief in 
a reality. This is a power that can belong to and inhere 
in a spiritual organism alone. We must, therefore, recog- 
nize in the infant this original implanted endowment, the 
capacity to be mentally convinced of realities ; and while, 
in order to the first exercise of this capacity there must be 
a physical organism which will conduct the sensory impres- 
sions to the brain and a brain that will receive them, the 
capacity of the infant to have its first conviction of the 
reality certified to it by the sensory impression is at once 
the capacity of an intellectual being, and a necessity im- 
posed upon him by the law of his existence. Idiocy, when 
complete, is the absence of this capacity, by reason of some 
failure of connection between the brain, as the central re- 
cipient of sensory impressions, and the mind which should 
receive and transmute those impressions into thought. We 
are scarcely warranted in regarding the idiot as a human 
animal possessed of no mind whatever. The absolute idiot 
should be defined as a human creature whom we can not 
educate at all — in whom we can awaken no intelligence ; 
but we are not therefore authorized in believing that there 
is no provision whatever for the development of intelligence 
after the mere physical life of the body is ended. Absolute 
idiocy, or what, from our as yet imperfect means of devel- 



IDIOTS. 627 

oping intelligence in such unfortunate persons we must 
regard as at present absolute, is probably very rare. Be- 
tween human creatures so born and those vast multitudes 
in whom average intelligence is developed by surrounding 
influences, whatever they may be, there are various degrees 
of the capacity for development ; and what happens in 
these intermediate cases proves that there are different de- 
grees in which the connection between the physical and the 
mental organism is established at birth, so that in some the 
connection may be said to be abnormal and imperfect, 
while in the enormous majority it is at least so nearly nor- 
mal and complete that intelligence may be developed. 

Here, then, is the place to advert to Mr. Spencer's asser- 
tion that the doctrine that intelligence in the human being 
is wholly produced by experience is utterly inadmissible ; 
that it makes the presence of a brain meaningless, and 
idiocy unaccountable. A doctrine which imputes the de- 
velopment of intelligence wlioUy to the experience of the 
individual is of course untenable. There must be a brain 
and a nervous system ; but we are not warranted, in the 
case of the idiot, in assuming that he has a differently or- 
ganized brain and nervous system from those of his parents 
or others of the human race, as Mr. Spencer appears to me 
to assume. What we are warranted in believing is that 
while the brain and nervous system of the idiot child may 
be just as complete in his structure as in those of the par- 
ents, there has somehow occurred, from some cause, ante- 
cedent in some cases to birth, but operating after birth in 
other cases, a failure of the adequate connection between 
the brain and the mind, so that intelligence can not be de- 
veloped at all, or can be developed but partially. The in- 
dividual may have inherited just as good an *' organized 
register" of the experience of his ancestors — just as good a 
natural brain as his brothers and sisters who are perhaps 
highly intelligent from their birth, or capable of becoming 



528 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

intelligent. Yet he lacks the ability to co-ordinate impres- 
sions and to perform the actions approjiriate to those im- 
pressions, because there has failed to be established in him 
the necessary connection between the impressions and the 
sensory intellectual system which constitutes one organic 
part of the mind. The experiences, however often re- 
peated, of the impressions produced by his physical senses 
on his brain, remain there as corporeal feelings. They 
reach no further. They do not become transmuted into 
ideas, and so intelligence can not be developed, or is de- 
veloped but to a very feeble extent. Instead of saying that 
" the gradually increasing intelligence displayed throughout 
childhood is more attributable to the completion of the 
cerebral organization than to the individual experiences," 
I should say that it is most attributable to the presence of 
an established connection between the function of the cere- 
bral organization and the mental receptivity of impressions, 
which is not merely passive, but is incessantly active be- 
cause incessantly receiving, and that, where this connection 
is wanting, the receptivity, although it may exist, can not 
become active, and so intelligence can not be developed in 
this life. But there may be another state of existence, in 
which the mind of the idiot, no longer dependent on a 
physical organization of brain and nervous system for the 
reception of ideas and for intellectual growth, but retaining 
its capacity for mental development, may begin and carry 
on such development by other means ; whereas, if the brain 
and the nervous system constitute all there is of any human 
being, whether born an idiot or born capable of intellectual 
growth through his individual experiences, he can have no 
future after that brain and nervous system are destroyed,j 
unless we suppose that mind is something that has beei 
developed out of matter into a spiritual existence — a sup- 
position which is to me inconceivable. 

The second of the intellectual faculties is the associa- 



INTROSPECTION. 529 

tive, or that intuitive power by which ideas are combined 
and associated or held in disjunction and separation. I 
regard this as an intuitive faculty, because, as our obser- 
vation teaches us, its presence and power, manifested at the 
first dawning of infantile intelligence, are attested by every 
exercise of the organs through which tlie external world 
reaches our minds, to the last moment of our mortal exist- 
ence. Experience is, of course, necessary to the first action 
of this intuitive faculty. This is only another way of say- 
ing that there must occur a sensory impression upon the 
brain which becomes transmuted into the idea of the ex- 
ternal object, and then a repetition of that impression pro- 
duces a repetition of the idea, and the associative faculty 
combines or disjoins them. But unless there exists an in- 
tuitive power, inherent in the intellective system, whereby 
the first idea and the second can be associated and com- 
pared, there can be no knowledge, no acquisition of truth, 
because the sensory impressions will stop in the brain as so 
many feelings excited through the nervous system, instead 
of being transmuted into thought. 

The introspective faculty, on the other hand, does not 
deal solely with sensory impressions, or with the ideas 
which they have suggested. It is that power of the mind 
by which it can look inward upon itself. This is seem- 
ingly a paradox ; but nevertheless, the existence of such a 
faculty is a necessary hypothesis, not only because we are 
conscious of it, but because without it we could have no 
means of analyzing our own mental structure, although we 
could make some very partial analysis of the mind of an- 
other individual by studying his actions. As regards our- 
selves, it is as if our visual organs possessed the power of 
looking at the process by which an image of an external 
object is impressed upon the retina and is thence transmit- 
ted to the brain, where the sensory impression is produced. 
This, of course, is a physical impossibility. All we can do 



530 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

is to examine the physical structure of the eye, with its 
wonderful provision of lenses and other means for the re- 
ception and the effect of light, and to reason upon what we 
can discover that the process of what is called seeing must 
be thus or thus. But that process itself we can not see by 
the same organs by which it is carried on. In the case of 
the mind, however — and herein is one of the remarkable 
proofs of its unlikeness as an organism to the bodily or- 
ganism — there is a power to witness, to observe, to be sen- 
sible of its own operations. This power, like all the other 
mental powers, may be very feeble in some individuals, for 
want of exercise, but in others, from long and frequent ex- 
ercise, it may become exceedingly vigorous, and be the 
means of advancing mental philosophy if its observations 
are preserved and recorded. It is one of the systems which, 
as a whole, constitute the spiritual organism to which we 
give the name of mind. Such a capacity can not be predi- 
cated of a physical organism. It is impossible for us to 
conceive of a machine standing and looking upon its own 
operations, speculating upon their improvement, or think- 
ing of the relation of its mechanism to the human author 
of its being. It is equally impossible for us to think of the 
body of man contemplating its own existence, or being sen- 
sible of it ; but it is perfectly easy to conceive of its being 
known to the mind that inhabits it, which takes cognizance 
both of its own operations and of the operations of the 
physical organism, reflects upon them separately or in their 
action upon one another, and spontaneously refers both to 
an author. 

Third. I have placed third in the category of mental 
systems the system of emotions or susceptibilities to mental 
pleasure or pain, as distinguished from the pleasurable or 
painful excitation of our nervous system. No one can 
doubt that, however powerful may be the influence upon 
our mental states of physical pain or physical sensations 



MENTAL PLEASURE OR PAIN. 531 

that are pleasurable, there is such a thing as mental pain 
and mental pleasure, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, wholly 
unconnected with and in no way dependent upon our cor- 
poreal feelings, present or past. It is from this suscepti- 
bility to mental pain or pleasure that we come to have the 
idea of goodness or badness, which is originally a classifica- 
tion of the qualities of external things as good or bad ; the 
good being those which affect us pleasurably, and the bad 
those which affect us painfully. By our mental organiza- 
tion we are placed in such correspondence with the mate- 
rial universe, that things apart from ourselves affect us 
agreeably or disagreeably ; sights, sounds, odors, and tastes 
give us pleasure or pain. We are also placed in correspond- 
ence with the spiritual universe, and thereby certain acts, 
relations, and traits of character give us pleasure, or the 
reverse. In process of time, the youth whose mental sys- 
tems are in the course of expansion comes to perceive that 
his own acts give him pleasure or pain, and hence he de- 
rives the perception of good or bad qualities in himself. 
Moral goodness in ourselves — goodness of disposition, of 
intention, of volition, of habit — is found to be distinct from 
physical and intellectual goodness ; and thus the conscious- 
ness of moral goodness becomes the intellectual faculty to 
which moral commands can be addressed, with a prospect 
that the connection between obedience and happiness will 
be perceived. This susceptibility to mental pain or pleas- 
ure, from the qualities of external things, from the acts and 
dispositions of other persons, and from our own, is one that 
can inhere in a mental organization, but it can not possibly 
inhere in a physical organism. The physical organism is 
undoubtedly the means by which the mental susceptibility 
to pleasure or pain is reached from the external universe ; 
but, unless there is a mental organism to feel the pleasure 
or the pain, the action of the physical organization is noth- 
ing but the excitation of the nervous system. I, therefore, 
24 



532 CREATION OR EVOLUTION"? 

make a distinct class among the mental systems, and assign 
to it the faculty of experiencing mental pleasure or mental 
pain as a capacity distinct from the pleasurable or painful 
. excitation of our nerves. 

Fourth. In the category of mental systems may be placed 
those desires which lead us to wish for and strive to obtain 
some good or to avoid some evil. This, surely, is not to 
be regarded as anything but an intellectual perception of 
what is to us a good or an eyil. It is a structural capacity 
of the soul which, after an experience of that which we 
learn to be good for us, or the reyerse of good, is always 
prompting us to take the steps or to perform the acts which 
will insure a repetition of that experience, in the acquisi- 
tion of further good or the ayoidance of further eyil. Its 
operations may be peryerted. We may, from bad habits or 
erroneous ideas of good and eyil, pursue objects that are 
pernicious. But whether we strive for that which is truly 
good, or is deceptively regarded as a good, we are perpetu- 
ally acting under the impulse of a desire that is implanted 
in us, and that operates as a desire whether its objects are 
worthy or unworthy, beneficial or injurious, noxious or in- 
noxious to our moral health. 

Fifth, and lastly, we may classify the affections as one 
of the structural systems of our spiritual existence. It is 
that part of our natures that makes us like or dislike both 
persons and things ; and, in regard to the former, it is the 
capacity for love in its high distinction from the physical 
appetite of sexual passion. The range of its operation is 
most yarious and multiform, but throughout all of its 
operations it is a spiritual capacity, implanted in us for 
our happiness as spiritual beings. 

If it is objected that this is an arbitrary classification — 
that as an analysis of structural systems in our mental or- 
ganization it bears no analogy to the anatomical explora- 
tion and classification of the structural systems of our phys- 



CONTRASTED THEOEIES OF MIND. 533 

ical organism— the answer is, that in regard to the latter 
we make the examination by the exercise of our corporeal 
senses, chiefly by the visual organs, as we do in the case of 
all other organized matter. In analyzing the structural 
organization of our minds, we are examining a subject that 
is not laid bare to the inspection of any of our corporeal 
organs ; the scalpel in the hand of the dissector can afford 
us no aid in this investigation, but the inspection must be 
carried on by turning the eye of the mind inward upon 
itself. This we are mentally constituted to do. While, 
therefore, it may be true that the classification which I 
have made, or which may have been made by others, of the 
structural mental systems, is in one sense arbitrary, and 
while in any method of describing them they may run into 
or overlap one another in a complex organism, it will al- 
ways remain true that the mind is capable of such exami- 
nations, and that the analysis, however given, is useful to 
the comprehension of the mind as an organized and ex- 
tended entity. No one can carry on this mental examina- 
tion without perceiving that he is examining a something 
which has an independent existence and a life of its own, 
whether he supposes it to have been evolved out of organ- 
ized matter, or embraces the idea of its distinct and sj)ecial 
creation by an exercise of the Divine Will. 

The two main hypotheses concerning the origin of mind 
may now be contrasted. In the long process of develop- 
ment of animal organisms out of one another there come 
to be, it is said, higher and higher degrees of intelligence, 
as the nervous system becomes more and more capable of 
complex impressions, until we arrive at the consummate 
physical organization and the supreme intelligence of the 
human race. The physical organization is open to our ex- 
amination, and we find the human brain divided into cere- 
bral masses, with ganglia of sensory nerves extending to 
the external sensory organs. Intelligence is the faculty of 



534 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

comprehending by preyious preparation the combinations 
of impressions made on the brain through the sensory 
neryes. The brain being an organized register in which 
the experiences of progenitors haye accumulated a high de- 
gree of this faculty, each human infant born into the world 
comes into it with a prepared capacity to acquire the com- 
binations of impressions produced in his indiyidual expe- 
rience. Transmitted from generation to generation, this 
inherited capacity becomes the means by which each indi- 
yidual manifests and enjoys what we call intelligence ; and 
the resulting aggregate of all the faculties thus called into 
exercise is what we denominate mind. It must be obseryed, 
howeyer, that this theory or explanation of the origin of 
mind, rejecting the hypothesis of its special creation as a 
being of a spiritual nature, assumes it to be a something 
which has been deyeloped out of the growth and improye- 
ment of a physical organism. When you inquire whether 
the nature of this something is supposed to be a product of 
a different substance from matter, although deyeloped out 
of matter, you are left without an answer ; and when you 
press the inquiry whether a spiritual existence can be con- 
ceiyed as haying grown out of the action of a physical or- 
ganism, you are told that there are no means of determin- 
ing what a spiritual existence is, because there is nothingj 
with which you can compare it so as to ascertain what ii 
resembles or what it does not resemble. Or if there are^ 
some who accept the eyolution theory of the origin of mind, 
and who think it possible that a spiritual existence can 
owe its origin to the action of matter without any inter- 
yention of a creating power purposely giying existence to a 
spiritual essence, you haye to ask a question to which you 
can only get this answer : that it has pleased the Almighty 
Being to establish a system by which a spiritual in contra- 
distinction to a physical existence has been deyeloped in 
countless ao:es out of the action of material substances or- 



CONTRASTED THEORIES OF MmD. 535 

ganized into definite systems and endowed with the princi- 
ple of life. Those who assume this hypothesis must neces- 
sarily assume also that the spiritual existence is, after it has 
come into being, an existence distinct from the physical 
organism, although generated out of it, and then they must 
encounter the further inquiry as to the probability of the 
supposed method of production resorted to by the Supreme 
Being. 

More than once In the course of our colloquies I have 
had occasion to say that, in all our inquiries of this nature, 
whether in regard to the origin of our physical organism or 
that of our mental existence, we must constantly bear in 
mind the unbounded capacity of the Creator to adopt any 
method of production whatever ; that it is just as much 
within his power to call things of the most opposite natures 
into existence by a single word as it is to establish methods 
by which they shall be developed through innumerable ages 
of what we call time. That the Being who is supposed to 
preside over the universe and to hold this unlimited power 
is an hypothesis I readily admit ; but I affirm that his exist- 
ence and attributes are necessary postulates, without which 
there can be no reasoning concerning the origin of any- 
thing. Whether that Being exists and possesses the at- 
tributes which we impute to him I have all along said is a 
matter of which we must be satisfied by independent proofs 
before we undertake to investigate his probable methods. 

The hypothesis of the origin of mind which I now mean 
to contrast with that of the evolutionists may be stated as 
follows : It is a rational deduction, from all that we know 
of our physical organism, that procreation of new individu- 
als of that organism by the sexual union of male and female 
was established as the means of continuing the species of 
animal known as man. When or how established is not 
a material part of the inquiry that I now make. It may 
have been that the division of the sexes came about by a 



636 CREATION^ OR EVOLUTION? 

very slow process, or it may have been by tbe aboriginal 
creation of a completed pair, male and female. However 
or whenever it came to exist, there came to be one uniform 
method of bringing into existence new individuals of a 
peculiar and perfectly distinguishable animal type. If we 
confine our attention to the physical organism of man, it 
is perfectly apparent that when procreation and gestation 
take place they happen because of the established law that 
a new individual of this species of animal shall be produced 
by the sexual union of two other individuals, male and fe- 
male, and that the new individual shall have the same jyhjs- 
ical organism as the parents. A new physical life thus 
springs out of two other physical lives by a process the 
secret of which we can not detect, although we can trace it 
through some of its stages so far as to see that there is a 
secret process by which two physical organisms give exist- 
ence to another physical organism of the same type and 
having the same principle of life. 

As the new individual animal grows into further devel- 
opment, we find that along with his animal organism and 
united with it by a tie which we can not see, but about 
which we can reason, there is apparently present a kind of 
life that is something more than the life of the body. The 
further we carry our investigations of the phenomena which 
indicate the existence of this mental life, the more we be- 
come convinced that it is the life of a spiritual organism. 
As the Creator had the power to give existence to the cor- 
poreal organism, why had he not an equal power to give 
existence to a spiritual organism? If he established the 
law of sexual union between a male and a female in order 
to perpetuate the type of animal to which they belong — the 
law which gives existence to a new individual of that animal 
type every time that a new conception and a new birth take 
place — why should he not have established the collateral 
law that every time there is a new birth of an infant there 



LAW OF PHYSICAL AND OF MENTAL EXISTENCE. 537 

shall come into existence a spiritual entity which shall be 
united to the corporeal organism for a time, thus consti- 
tuting in that infant a dual existence which makes his 
whole individuality during this life ? If we suppose that 
the physical organism of our double natures was left to be 
worked out by a very slow process, by which physical or- 
ganisms are developed out of one another — or by which we 
theoretically suppose them to have been so developed — why 
is it necessary to suppose that our spirits or souls have been 
developed in the same way or by an analogous method ? 
What reason have we to believe that the Creator works by 
the same methods in the spiritual world, or by methods 
that are of the same nature as those which we think we can 
discover to be his methods in giving existence to corporeal 
organisms ? The two realms of spirit and matter are so 
completely unlike that we are not compelled to believe that 
the methods by which creation of organisms of the two 
kinds are effected by the Almighty are necessarily or prob- 
ably the same. 

In order to be clearly understood I will now repeat my 
hypothesis in a distinct form. I assume the existence of a 
pair of animals of the human type, male and female, en- 
dowed with the power of producing new individuals of the 
same type. In their physical organisms is established the 
law of procreation, and in the female counterpart of that or- 
ganism is established the concomitant law of conception and 
parturition. Thus far provision is made for the production 
of a new individual physically organized like the parents. In 
those parents there is also established another law, by the 
operation of which the same process which results in the 
production of the new individual animal organism brings 
into existence a spiritual organism, which is united with and 
becomes the companion of the physical organism so long as 
the latter shall continue to live. These laws established in 
the first pair and in every succeeding pair continue to op- 



638 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

erafce throngli every succeeding generation. Perhaps it will 
be said that this attributes the production of a spiritual or- 
ganism to a physical process ; but, in truth, it does no more 
than to assert the simultaneous production of the two ex- 
istences. It is not necessary to assume that the foetus 
which becomes at birth the human infant is before birth 
animated by a soul ; for it is not necessary to suppose, nor 
is it apparently true, that the physical organism is complete 
until birth takes place and the breath of life enters the 
lungs, thus constituting a new life other than that of the 
foetus or the unborn child, although the one is a continua- 
tion of the other. At whateyer point of time the complete 
animal organism is in a condition to be observed so that we 
can say here is a living child, at that point we begin to 
perceive a capacity to receive impressions from the external 
world without the connection that has theretofore existed 
between the unborn child and the maternal system. This 
capacity must either be attributed to the individual experi- 
ence of the infant, so that without experience of his own he 
can not begin to be possessed of a growing intelligence, or 
it must be imputed to an innate and implanted power resi- 
dent in a spiritual organism that comes into exercise when- 
ever the physical organism has begun to draw the breath of 
life. 

The evolution hypothesis of the origin of the human 
mind necessarily leaves its nature in an indeterminate state 
that will not satisfy the requirements of sound reasoning. 
In one mode of stating and reasoning upon this hypothesis 
it is assumed that there is not now and never was a mental 
existence that was created in each individual of the race at 
his birth ; but that at some very remote period in the his- 
tory of successive animal organisms there was produced an 
animal of a highly developed nervous structure, capable of 
intelligence by reason of a superior power of receiving phys- 
ical impressions and co-ordinating them into states of con- 



DUALITY OF OUR PRESENT EXISTENCE. 539 

sciousness which correspond to the physical feelings ; and 
to the perpetually recurring series of these states of con- 
sciousness we give the name of mind. This capacity of in- 
telligence is transmitted from parents to offspring, the ex- 
periences of the former being registered in the brain of the 
latter ; but however complete may be the inherited nervous 
structure, and however great the capacity for intelligence, 
mind in each individual of the race is evidenced by nothing 
but a constant succession and variation of certain states of 
feelings produced in the nervous structure. 

Against this view we may place what we know from 
constant observation. We know that it has been ordained, 
as a consequence of the sexual union of two individuals of 
opposite sex, there shall come into existence a new indi- 
vidual of the same physical organism as the parents. Of 
the interior process by which this product is effected we 
must remain ignorant, but about the fact there can be no 
doubt. That fact is, that by the union of certain vesicles 
contributed by each of the parents there results a new indi- 
vidual organism. We know further that simultaneously 
with the complete production of the new physical organism, 
there comes into being, and is incorporated with it, an exist- 
ence that we are compelled by the phenomena which it 
manifests to regard as a non-physical and a spiritual organ- 
ism. Of the process by which this distinct existence is 
effected, we must remain as ignorant as we are of the pro- 
cess by which the physical organism was made to result 
from the sexual union of the parents. But of the fact 
there can be no more doubt in the one case than in the 
other. In every instance of a new birth of a perfect infant, 
we know that there results a dual existence in the same 
individual ; the one manifested by physical, the other by 
mental phenomena. To argue that the mental and spirit- 
ual existence grew out of an improved and improving phys- 
ical organism in long-past ages, and became an adjunct 



640 CEEATION OR EVOLUTION? 

to that organism after it had attained a certain develop- 
ment, without any intervention of the creating power at 
each new birth of an individual infant, is to limit the power 
of the Creator in a realm wherein the subject of his creating 
power is essentially unlike the subject with which he deals 
when he deals with physical organisms. In all reasoning 
upon the origin and nature of the human mind, the bound- 
less power of the Creator must be assumed. In judging of 
the probabilities of his methods of action, it is the safest 
course to be guided by what we can see takes place at every 
new birth of a human infant. The physical organism re- 
sults from the operation of a certain law. The mental or- 
ganism results, it is alike rational to presume, from the 
operation of a certain other law. How either of these laws 
operates we are not permitted to know, but we can as safely 
infer the one as the other, from what is open to our obser- 
vation. 

I shall now touch briefly upon another argument, the 
foundation of which is to be tested by historical facts into 
the truth of which I shall not here inquire, because they 
must, for the purposes for which I use them, be assumed. 
The immortality of the human soul is said to have been 
proved by a Divine revelation. This great fact is supposed 
to be established by evidence of a character quite different 
from that which convinces us of the existence and attri- 
butes of the Almighty. But, assuming revelation to be a 
fact, it has an important bearing upon the subject of this 
essay, because the question arises, for what conceivable rea- 
son the Almighty should have made to us a revelation of 
our immortality, through the direct testimony of a compe- 
tent witness, if we are not spiritual beings. Information 
of a fact supposes that there was a person to be informed. 
Concurrently with the consciousness which assures us of our 
personality, we have the assurance of our immortality cer- 
tified to us by a messenger expressly authorized to give us 



REVELATION. 541 

the information. If the mind, or that part of our indi- 
viduality which we call the soul, is in its origin and nature 
nothing but what the eyolution theory supposes, what was 
there to be informed of immortality, or of anything else ? 
The possibility and certainty of an existence after the death 
of the body is a conviction that must exercise great influ- 
ence over the conduct of niien in this life. It is consistent 
with the whole apparent scheme of the revelation to sup- 
pose that it was made for a twofold purpose : first, to cause 
men to lead better lives in this world than they might have 
led without this information and conviction ; and, secondly, 
to form them for greater happiness in another world. The 
first of these purposes might have been effectuated by caus- 
ing men to believe in their own immortality, notwithstand- 
ing the belief might be a delusion because there is no being 
capable, in fact, of any existence after the life of the body 
is ended. But such a method of action is hardly to be im- 
puted to the Creator and Supreme Governor of the uni- 
verse, according to the ideas of his character which natural 
religion alone will give us. It is not in accordance with 
rational conceptions of his attributes to suppose that he de- 
ludes his rational creatures with assurances or apparent 
proofs of something that is not true for the sake of making 
them act as if it were true. When we find ourselves run- 
ning into a hypothesis of this kind, we may be pretty sure 
that we are departing from correct principles of reasoning. 
In regard to the second of the supposed purposes for which 
the revelation of immortality was made — to form men for 
greater happiness in another state of existence — it is quite 
obvious that the supposed scheme of the revelation is a 
mere delusion, if we are not beings capable of a continued 
spiritual existence after the death of our bodies. It is there- 
fore a matter of great consequence to determine what the 
evolution theory of the origin and nature of the human 
mind makes us out to be. 



542 CREATION" OR EVOLUTION? 

I have never seen any statement of that theory that 
does not lead to the conclusion that man is a highly deyel- 
oped animal organism, whose mental existence is not some- 
thing created in each individual of the race, and of a sub- 
stance and organized structure different from the physical 
organism, but whose mental phenomena are merely exhibi- 
tions and effects of occurrences taking place in the physic- 
al system, and assuming the shape of what for distinct- 
ness is called thought. In whatever form this theory has 
been stated by its most distinguished professors, it leaves 
only an interval of degree, and not an interval of kind, 
between the mind of man and that which, in some of 
the other animals, is supposed to be mind. The evolution 
doctrine, taken in one of its aspects, supposes one grand 
chain of animal organisms, rising higher and higher in the 
scale of animal life, but connected together by ordinary 
generation, so that they are of one kindred throughout; 
but that, as each distinct species grows out of predecessors, 
by gradual improvements and increments, forming more 
and more elaborate organisms, man is the consummate 
product of the whole process. But when we ask at what 
point or stage in the series of developing animal organisms 
the mind of man was produced, or what it was when pro- 
duced, we get no satisfactory answer. To the first ques- 
tion, it can only be answered, as Darwin himself answers, 
that there must be a definition of man before we can deter- 
mine at what time he came to exist. To the second ques- 
tion, we have answers which differ materially from each 
other. First, we have whatever we can extract from such 
a system of psychology as Mr. Spencer's, which ignores the 
capability of the mind to exist independent of the nervous 
structure and the brain, because it excludes the idea of any 
ego, any me, any person, and makes consciousness to con- 
sist of a connected series of physical feelings, to which 
there are corresponding psychical equivalents that he calls 



WHAT DID GOD CREATE? 643 

mental states. It would seem to follow, therefore, that 
when there is no longer remaining for the individual any 
nervous structure and any brain, the mental states, or psy- 
chical side of the physical impressions, must cease ; or, in 
other words, that the only existing ego has come to an end. 

On the other hand, I have seen an ingenious hypothe- 
sis which it is well to refer to, because it illustrates the 
efforts that are often made to reconcile the doctrines of 
evolution with a belief in immortality. This hypothesis by 
no means ignores the possibility of a spiritual existence, or 
the spiritual as distinguished from the material world. 
But it assumes that man was produced under the operation 
of physical laws ; and that after he had become a completed 
product — the consummate and finished end of the whole 
process of evolution — he passed under the dominion and 
operation of other and different laws, and is saved from 
annihilation by the intervention of a change from the phys- 
ical to the spiritual laws of his Creator. Put into a con- 
densed form, this theory has been thus stated : Having 
spent countless aeons in forming man, by the slow process of 
animal evolution, God will not suffer him to fall back into 
elemental flames, and be consumed by the further opera- 
tion of physical laws, but will transfer him into the domin- 
ion of the spiritual laws that are held in reserve for his 
salvation. 

One of the first questions to be asked, in reference to 
this hypothesis, is. Who or what is it that God is supposed 
to have spent countless aeons in creating by the slow process 
of animal evolution ? If we contemplate a single specimen 
of the human race, we find a bodily organism, endowed 
with life like that of other animals, and acted upon by 
physical laws throughout the whole period of its existence. 
We also find present in the same individual a mental exist- 
ence, which is certified to us by evidence entirely different 
from that by which we obtain a knowledge of the physical 



54:4 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

organism. As the methods employed by the Creator in the 
production of the physical organism, whatever we may sup- 
pose them to have been, were physical laws operating upon 
matter, so the methods employed by him in the production 
of a spiritual existence must have operated in a domain 
that was wholly aside from the physical world. Each of 
these distinct realms is equally under the government of an 
Omnipotent Being ; and while we may suppose that in the 
one he employed a very slow process, such as the evolution 
of animal organisms out of one another is imagined to have 
been, there is no conceivable reason why he should not, in 
the other and very different realm, have resorted to the 
direct creation of a spiritual existence, which can not, in 
the nature of things, have required to be produced by the 
action of physical laws. When, at the birth of each indi- 
vidual of the human race, the two existences become 
united, when, in consequence of the operation of that 
sexual union of the parents which has been ordained for 
the production of a new individual, the physical and the 
spiritual existence become incorporated in the one being, 
the fact that they remain for a certain time mutually de- 
pendent and mutually useful, co-operating in the purposes 
of their temporary connection, does not change their essen- 
tial nature. The one may be destructible because the opera- 
tion of physical laws may dissolve the ligaments that hold 
it together ; the other may be indestructible, because the 
operation of spiritual laws will hold together the spiritual 
organism that is in its nature independent of the laws of 
matter. 

I can therefore see no necessary connection between the 
methods employed by the Almighty in the production of 
an animal and the methods employed by him in the pro- 
duction of a soul. That in the birth of the individual the 
two come into existence simultaneously, and are tempora- 
rily united in one and the same being, only proves that the 



WANT OF THE PRESENT AGE. 545 

two existences are contemporaneous in their joint incep- 
tion. It does not prove that they are of the same nature, or 
the same substance, or that the physical organism is the 
only ego, or that the psychical existence is nothing but 
certain states of the material structure, to whose aggregate 
manifestations certain philosophers give the name of mind, 
while denying to them personal individuality and the con- 
sciousness of a distinct being. 

And now, in bringing this discussion to a close, I will 
only add that the great want of this age is the prosecution 
of inquiry into the nature of the human mind as an organic 
structure, regarded as such. It seems to me that the whole 
mission of Science is now perverted by a wrong aim, which 
is to find out the external to the neglect of the internal — to 
make all exploration terminate in the laws of the physical 
universe, and go aside from the examination of the spiritual 
world. It is no reproach to those who essay the latter in- 
quiry that they are scoffed at as '^the metaphysicians." It 
matters not what they are called, so long as they pursue the 
right path. It is now in regard to the pursuit of science as 
it was formerly in regard to the writing of history. That 
philosophical French historian, M. Taine, has luminously 
marked the change which has come over the methods and 
objects of historical studies in the following passage : 

''When you consider with your eyes the visible man, 
what do you look for ? The man invisible. The words which 
salute your ears, the gestures, the motions of his head, the 
clothes he wears, visible acts and deeds of every kind, are ex- 
pressions merely ; somewhat is revealed beneath them, and 
that is a soul — an inner man is concealed beneath the outer 
man ; the second does not reveal the first ; ... all the 
externals are but avenues converging toward a center ; you 
enter them simply to reach that center, and that center is 
the genuine man — I mean that mass of faculties and feel- 
ings which are the inner man. We have reached a new 



546 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

world, which is infinite, because eyery action which we see 
involves an infinite association of reasonings, emotions, sen- 
sations new and old, which have served to bring it to light, 
and which, like great rocks deep-seated in the ground, find 
in it their end and their level. This under-world is a new 
subject-matter proper to the historian. . . . This precise 
and proved interpretation of past sensations has given to 
history, in our days, a second birth ; hardly anything of 
the sort was known to the preceding century. They thought 
men of every race and country were all but identical — the 
Greek, the barbarian, the Hindoo, the man of the Renais- 
sance, and the man of the eighteenth century — as if they 
had all been turned out of a common mold, and all in 
conformity to a certain abstract conception which served 
for the whole human race. They knew man, but not men ; 
they had not penetrated to the soul ; they had not seen the 
infinite diversity and complexity of souls ; they did not 
know that the moral constitution of a people or an age is 
as particular and distinct as the physical structure of a 
family of plants or an order of animals." * 

In the same way psychology needs a new birth, like the 
new birth of history. If we would know the mind, we 
must reach the conviction that there is a mind : and this con- 
viction can be reached only by penetrating through all the 
externals, through the physical organism, through the 
diversities of race, through the environment of matter, 
until we have found the soul. If history, like zoology, 
has found its anatomy, mental science must, in like man- 
ner, be prosecuted as an anatomical study. So long as we 
allow the anatomy of zoology to be the predominant and 
only explanation, the beginning and the end of the mental 
manifestations, so long we shall fail to comprehend the 
nature of man, and to see the reason for his immortality. 

^ Introduction to Taine's " History of English Literature," translated 
by H. Van Laun. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1885. 



GLOSSAEY 



OF 

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL TERMS USED IN THIS WORK. 



[The following definitions marked with an asterisk are borrowed from the 
glossary annexed to Darwin's " Origin of Species.'' The remainder of the 
definitions are taken from Webster's Dictionary.] 

* Aberrant. Forms or groups of animals or plants which deviate in 
important characters from their nearest allies, so as not to be 
easily included in the same group with them, are said to be 
aberrant. 

*Abnornial. Contrary to the general rule. 

*A'borted. An organ is said to be aborted when its development has 
been arrested at a very early stage. 

Aerate (ZooL). To subject to the influence of the air by the natural 
organs of respiration ; to arterialize ; especially used of animals 
not having lungs. 

Agnostic (a.). Professing ignorance ; involving no dogmatic asser- 
tion ; leaving a question or problem still in doubt ; pertaining to 
or involving agnosticism. 

Agnostic (n.). One who professes ignorance, or refrains from dog- 
matic assertion; one who supports agnosticism, neither affirmhig 
nor denying the existence of a personal Deity. 

Agnosticism. That doctrine which, professing ignorance, neither 
asserts nor denies ; specifically, in theology, the doctrine that the 
existence of a personal Deity can be neither asserted nor denied, 
neither proved nor disproved, because of the necessary limits of 
the human mind (as sometimes charged upon Hamilton and Man- 
sel), or because of the insufficiency of the evidence furnished by 
psychical and physical data, to warrant a positive conclusion (as 
taught by the school of Herbert Spencer) ; opposed alike to dog- 
matic skepticism and to dogmatic theism. 



648 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

AUantois, AUantoid. A thin membrane, situated between the 
chorion and amnion, and forming one of the membranes which in- 
vest the foetus. 

*Analogy. That resemblance of structures which depends upon 
similarity of function, as in the wings of insects and birds. Such 
structures are said to be analogous, and to be analogues of each 
other. 

Antliroponiorphisin. The representation of the Deity under a 
human form, or with human attributes. 

*Articulata. A great division of the animal kingdom, characterized 
generally by having the surface of the body divided into rings, 
called segments, a greater or less number of which are furnished 
with jointed legs (such as insects, crustaceans, and centipeds). 

Articulation (Anat.). The joining or juncture of the bones of a 
skeleton. 

Ascidians. A class of acephalous moUusks, having often a leathery 
exterior. 

Biology. The science of life ; that part of physiology which treats 
of life in general, or of the different forces of life. 

Brain. The upper part of the head. 1. (Anat.) The whitish, soft 
mass which constitutes the anterior or cephalic extremity of the 
nervous system in man and other verebrates, occupying the upper 
cavity of the skull ; and (&) the anterior or cephalic ganglion in 
insects and other invertebrates. 

2. The organ or seat of intellect ; hence, the understanding. 

3. The affections ; fancy ; imagination. 
*Branclii8e. Gills, or organs for respiration in water. 
*Branch.ial. Pertaining to gills or branchiae. 

*Canid8e. The dog family, including the dog, wolf, fox, jackal, etc. 

Cell. A minute, inclosed space or sac, filled with fluid, making up 
the cellular tissue of plants, and of many parts of animals, and 
originating the parts by their growth and reproduction ; the con- 
stituent element of all plants and animals (though not universal 
for all parts of such structure), much as a crystalline molecule is 
the element of a crystal. In the simplest plants and animals (as 
the infusoria), one single cell constitutes the complete individual, 
such species being called unicellular plants or animals. 

Cephalopod (Fr. ceplialopode, from Gr., head and foot). (Zool.) An 
animal of the sub-kingdom Ilollusca, characterized by a distinct 
head, surrounded by a circle of long arms or tentacles, which they 
use for crawling and for seizing objects. See Mollusk. 



GLOSSAEY. 549 

*Cetacea. An order of Mammalia, including the whales, dolphins, 
etc., having the form of the body fish-like, the skin naked, and 
only the fore-limbs developed. 

Chaos. 1. An empty, infinite space ; a yawning chasm. 

2. The rude, confused state, or unorganized condition, of matter 
before the creation of the universe. 

Consciousness. 1. The knowledge of sensations and mental opera- 
tions, or of what passes in one's own mind ; the act of the mind 
which makes known an internal object. 

2. Immediate knowledge of any object whatever. 

■^Crustaceans. A class of articulated animals having the skin of the 
body generally more or less hardened by the deposition of cal- 
careous matter, breathing by means of gills. {Examples, crab, 
lobster, shrimp, etc.) 

Dynamically. In accordance with the principles of dynamics or 
moving forces. 

*Em.bryo. The young animal undergoing development within the 
Qgg or womb. 

*Enibryology. The study of the development of the embryo. 

Ethics. The science of human duty; the body of rules of duty 
drawn from this science; a particular system of principles and 
rules concerning duty, whether true or false ; rules of practice in 
respect to a single class of human actions ; as political or social 
ethics. 

*Fauna. The totality of the animals naturally inhabiting a certain 
country or region, or which have lived during a given geological 
period. 

Fetichism, Feticism. One of the lowest and grossest forms of 
superstition, consisting in the worship of some material object, as 
a stone, a tree, or an animal, often casually selected; practiced 
among tribes of lowest mental endowment, as certain races of 
negroes. 

*Flora. The totality of the plants growing naturally in a country 
or during a given geological period. 

*Fcetal. Of or belonging to the foetus, or embryo in course of devel- 
opment. 

Foetus, same as Fetus. The young of viviparous animals in the 
womb, and of oviparous animals in the Qgg, after it is perfectly 
formed, before which time it is called embryo. 

*Ganoid Fishes. Fishes covered with peculiar enameled bony scales. 
Most of them are extinct. 



550 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

Genus (Science). An assemblage of species possessing certain char- 
acters in common, by which they are distinguished from all others. 
It is subordinate to tribe and suh-tribe ; hence, a single species hav- 
ing distinctive characters that seem of more than specific value 
may constitute a genus. 

^Germinal Vesicle. A minute vesicle in the eggs of animals, from 
which the development of the embryo proceeds. 

Gravitation (Physics). That species of attraction or force by which 
all bodies or particles of matter in the universe tend toward each 
other ; called also attraction of gravitation, universal gravitation^ 
and universal gravity. 

Gravity (Physics). The tendency of a mass of matter toward a cen- 
ter of attraction; especially the tendency of a body toward the 
center of the earth, terrestrial gravitation. 

Gyrus, pi. Gyri (Anat.). A convolution of the brain. 

*Habitat. The locality in which a plant or animal naturally lives. 

Heredity. The transmission of the physical and psychical qualities 
of parents to their offspring ; the biological law by which living 
beings tend to repeat themselves in their descendants. 

Homologous. Having the same relative proportion, position, value, 
or structure ; especially— (a) (Geom.) Corresponding in relative posi- 
tion and proportion, (b) (Alg.) Having the same relative propor- 
tion or value, as the two antecedents or the two consequents of a 
proportion, (c) (Chem.) Being of the same chemical type or series ; 
differing by a multiple or arithmetical ratio in certain constituents, 
while the physical qualities are wholly analogous, with small rela- 
tive differences, as if corresponding to a series of parallels ; as, the 
species in the group of alcohols are said to be homologous, (d) 
(Zool.) Being of the same typical structure ; having like relations 
to a fundamental type of structure ; as, those bones in the hand of 
man and the fore-foot of a horse are homologous that correspond in 
their structural relations — that is, in their relations to the type- 
structure of the fore-limb in vertebrates. 

Homology. That relation between parts which results from their 
development from corresponding embryonic parts, either in differ- 
ent animals, as in the case of the arm of a man, the fore-leg of a 
quadruped, and the wing of a bird ; or in the same individual, as 
in the case of the fore and hind legs in quadrupeds, and the seg- 
ments or rings and their appendages of which the body of a worm, 
a centiped, etc., is composed. The latter is called serial homology. 
The parts which stand in such a relation to each other are said to 



GLOSSARY. 551 

be homologous, and one such part or organ is called the homologue 
of the other. In different plants the parts of the flower are homol- 
ogous, and in general these parts are regarded as homologous with 
leaves. 

Hypothesis. 1. A supposition ; a proposition or principle which is 
supposed or taken for granted, in order to draw a conclusion or in- 
ference for proof of the point in question ; something not proved, 
but assumed for the purpose of argument. 

2. A system or theory imagined or assumed to account for 
known facts or phenomena. 

Imago. The perfect (generally winged) reproductive state of an insect. 

Implacenta (n.). A mammal having no placenta, (a.) Without a 
placenta, as certain marsupial animals. 

Insectivorous. Feeding on insects. 

Instinct (n.). Inward impulse ; unconscious, involuntary, or unreason- 
ing prompting to action ; a disposition to any mode of action, 
whether bodily or spiritual, without a distinct apprehension of the 
end or object which Nature has designed should be accomplished 
thereby ; specifically, the natural, unreasoning impulse in an ani- 
mal, by which it is guided to the performance of any action, with- 
out thought of improvement in the method. 

Invertebrata, or Invertebrate Animals. Those animals which 
do not possess a backbone or spinal column. 

Isomeric (from Gr., equal and part). (Chem.) Having the quality 
of isomerism ; as isomeric compounds. 

Isomerism (Chem.). An identity of elements and of atomic propor- 
tions with a difference in the amount combined in the compound 
molecule, and of its essential qualities; as in the case of the 
physically unlike compounds of carbon and hydrogen, consisting 
one of one part of each, another of two parts of each, and a third 
of four of each. 

Kangaroo. A ruminating marsupial animal of the genus Macropus, 
found in Australia and the neighboring islands. 

Larva (plural Larvae). The first condition of an insect at its issuing 
from the e^g, when it is usually in the form of a grub, caterpillar, 
or maggot. 

Lemuridse. A group of four-handed animals, distinct from the 
monkeys, and approaching the insectivorous quadrupeds in some 
of their characters and habits. Its members have the nostrils 
curved or twisted, and a claw instead of a nail upon the first finger 
of the hind hands. 



652 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

Lepidosiren. An eel-shaped animal covered with rounded scales, 
having four rod-like members, and breathing water like a fish. It 
is found in ponds and rivers of intertropical Africa and South 
America. By some it is regarded as a fish, and by others as a ba- 
trachian. 

Mammal. Belonging to the breast; from mamma, the breast or 
pap. An animal of the highest class of vertebrates, characterized 
by the female suckling its young. 

Mam.m.alia. The highest class of animals, including the ordinary 
hairy quadrupeds, the whales, and man, and characterized by the 
production of living young, which are nourished after birth by 
milk from the teats (mammcB, mammary glands) of the mother. A 
striking difference in embryonic development has led to the divis- 
ion of this class into two great groups : in one of these, when the 
embryo has attained a certain stage, a vascular connection, called 
the placenta, is formed between the embryo and the mother ; in 
the other this is wanting, and the young are produced in a very 
incomplete state. The former, including the greater part of the 
class, are called placental mammals ; the latter, or aplacental mam- 
mals, include the marsupials and monotremes {ornithorliyncJius). 

Marsupials. An order of Mammalia in which the young are born 
in a very incomplete state of development, and carried by tha 
mother, while sucking, in a ventral pouch {marsupium), such as the 
kangaroos, opossums, etc. (see Mammalia). 

Molecule. A mass ; one of the invisible particles supposed to con- 
stitute matter of any kind. 

MoUusk. An invertebrate animal, having a soft, fleshy body 
(whence the name), which is inarticulate, and not radiate inter- 
nally. 

Monkey. See Simia. 

Monogamy. A marriage to one wife only, or the state of such as are 
restricted to a single wife, or may not marry again after the death 
of a first wife. 

Monotheism. The doctrine or belief that there is but one God. 

Morphology. The law of form or structure independent of function. 

Nascent. Commencing development. 

Nexus. Connection; tie. 

Nictitating Membrane. A semi-transparent membrane, which can 
be drawn across the eye in birds and reptiles, either to moderate 
the effects of a strong light or to sweep particles of dust, etc., from 
the surface of the eye. 



GLOSSAEY. 553 

Noumenon (Metaph.). The of itself unknown and unknowable ra- 
tional object, or thing in itself, which is distinguished from the 
phenomenon in which it occurs to apprehension, and by which it is 
interpreted and understood ; so used in the philosophy of Kant and 
his followers. 

Opossum. An animal of several species of marsupial quadrupeds of 
the genus Didelphys. The common species of the United States is 
the D. Virginiana. Another species, common in Texas and Cali- 
fornia, is D. Californica, and other species are found in South 
America. 

Orgardsm. An organized being, whether plant or animal. 

Ovule. An Ggg. (Bot.) The rudimentary state of a seed. It con- 
sists essentially of a nucleus developed directly from the placenta. 

Parasite. An animal or plant living upon or in, and at the expense 
of, another organism. 

Pelvis. The bony arch to which the hind-limbs of vertebrate ani- 
mals are articulated. 

Placentalia, Placentata, or Placental Mammals. See Mam- 
malia. 

Protozoa. The lowest great division of the Animal Kingdom. 
These animals are composed of a gelatinous material, and show 
scarcely any trace of distinct organs. The infusoria, foraminifera, 
and sponges, with some other forms, belong to this division. 

Plienom.enon. 1. An appearance ; anything visible ; whatever is 
presented to the eye ; whatever, in matter or spirit, is apparent to, 
or is apprehended by, observation, as distinguished from its ground, 
substance, or unknown constitution ; as phenomena of heat or elec- 
tricity ; phenomena of imagination or memory. 

3. Sometimes a remarkable or unusual appearance whose cause 
is not immediately obvious. 

Plexus. Any net-work of vessels, nerves, or fibers. 

Polygam.y. A plurality of wives or husbands at the same time, or 
the having of such plurality ; usually the condition of a man having 
more than one wife. 

Polytheism.. The doctrine of a plurality of gods or invisible beings 
superior to man, and having an agency in the government of the 
world. 

Proteine {n. Lat., proteinum, from Gr., first — to be the first — the 
first place, chief rank, because it occupies the first place in relation 
to the albuminous principles). (Chem.) A substance claimed by 
Mulder to be obtained as a distinct substance from albumen. 



554 CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 

fibrine, or caseine, and considered by him to be the basis of animal 
tissue and of some substances of vegetable origin. 

The theory of proteine can not be maintained. — Gregory. 
The theory of Mulder is doubted and denied by many chemists, 
and also the existence of proteine as a distinct substance. 

Psychology. A discourse or treatise on the human soul; the sci- 
ence of the human soul; specifically, the systematic or scientific 
knowledge of the powers and functions of the human soul, so far 
as they are known by consciousness. 

duadrumane. An animal having four feet that correspond to the 
hands of a man, as a monkey. 

Race. 1. The descendants of a common ancestor; a family, tribe, 
people, or nation, believed or presumed to belong to the same stock ; 
a lineage ; a breed. 
2. A root. 

Retina. The delicate inner coat of the eye, formed by nervous fila- 
ments spreading from the optic nerve, and serving for the percep- 
tion of the impressions produced by light. 

Rotifer {n. Lat. rotifer, from Lat. rota, a wheel, and ferro, to bear. 
Fr. rotifere). (Zool.) One of a group of microscopic crustaceans, 
having no limbs, and moving by means of rows of cilia about the 
head or the anterior extremity. 

Rudiment (Nat. Hist.). An imperfect organ, or one which is never 
fully formed. 

Sacral. Belonging to the sacrum, or the bone composed usually of 
two or more united vertebrae to which the sides of the pelvis in 
vertebrate animals are attached. 

Sacrum. The bone which forms the posterior part of the pelvis. It 
is triangular in form. 

Secularize. To convert from spiritual to secular or common use ; 
as to secularize a church, or church property. 

Segments. The transverse rings of which the body of an articulate 
animal or annelid is composed. 

Simia (plural Simiadee) (Lat., an ape, from simus, flat-nosed, snub- 
nosed). (Zool.) A Linnaean genus of animals, including the ape, 
monkey, and the like; a general name of the various tribes of 
monkeys. 

Species (Nat. Hist.). A permanent class of existing things or beings, 
associated according to attributes or properties which are deter- 
mined by scientific observation. 

Spinal Cord. The central portion of the nervous system in the ver- 



V 



GLOSSARY. 555 

tebrata, which descends from the brain through the arches of the 
vertebrae, and gives off nearly all the nerves to the various organs 
of the body. 

Statical. To stand. 1. Pertaining to bodies at rest, or in equilib- 
rium. 

2. Resting ; acting by mere weight without motion ; as statical 
pressure. 

Sulcus. A fissure of the brain, separating two convolutions, or gyri. 

Teleology (Fr., teleologie, from Gr., the end or issue, and discourse). 
The science or doctrine of the final causes of things ; the philo- 
sophical consideration of final causes in general. 

Variety (Nat. Hist., Bot., and ZooL). Any form or condition of 
structure under a species which differs in its characteristics from 
those typical to the species, as in color, shape, size, and the like, 
and which is capable either of perpetuating itself for a period, 
or of being perpetuated by artificial means ; also, any of the vari- 
ous forms under a species meeting the conditions mentioned. 
A form characterized by an abnormity of structure, or any differ- 
ence from the type that is not capable of being perpetuated 
through two or more generations, is not called a variety. 

Vascular. Containing blood-vessels. 

Vertebrata ; or Vertebrate Animals. The highest division of the 
animal kingdom, so called from the presence in most cases of a 
back-bone composed of numerous joints or vertebrcB, which consti- 
tutes the center of the skeleton, and at the same time supports and 
protects the central parts of the nervous system. 

Vesicle. A bladder-like vessel ; a membranous cavity ; a cyst ; a 
cell ; especially (a) (Bot.) a small bladder-like body in the substance 
of a vegetable, or upon the surface of a leaf. — Gray. (6) (Med.) A 
small orbicular elevation of the cuticle containing lymph, and suc- 
ceeded by a scurf or laminated scab ; also, any small cavity or sac 
in the human body ; as the umbilical vesicle. 

Vortices {verto, to turn). 1. A whirling or circular motion of any 
fluid, usually of water, forming a kind of cavity in the center of 
the circle, and in some instances drawing in water or absorbing 
other things ; a whirlpool. 

2. A whirling of the air ; a whirlwind. 

3. {Cartesian system.) A supposed collection of particles of 
very subtile matter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around 
an axis. By means of these vortices Descartes attempted to ac- 
count for the formation of the universe. 

25 



IE"DEX. 



Advocacy, maxim of, 132. 

Affections, structural system of, 532. 

Agnosticism, as defined by Huxley, 
2'74. 

Alantois, the, office of, 236 etseq.^ 245. 

Almagest. See Ptolemaic System. 

Amphibians in the Darwinian pedi- 
gree of man, 71, 96, 98. 

Amphioxus. See Lancelet. 

Amputation before or after birth, 
129, 130. 

Anatomy, modern, great advance of, 
40, 41. 
Plato's knowledge of, 38. 

Anatomy of the mind, 470. 

Animals, origin of, according to 
Plato, 57 et seq. 
origin of, according to Darwin, 60 
et seq. 

Anthropomorphic attributes not ne- 
cessary to the conception of God, 
293 et seq. 

Anthropomorphism, meaning, 293. 

Antichthon, or counter-earth, invented 
by the Pythagoreans, 36. 

Apes, varieties of, 71. 
anthropomorphous, 100. 

Apparitions, facts communicated by, 
486-488. 

Aquatic worm, 94. 

Areas, effect of change of, 248. 



Articulata, likeness of structure in, 

205 et seq. 
Ascidians, larvae of, 94. 
Assassination, ouce employed with 

impunity, 165. 
Associative faculty, what it is, 528. 
Athenian, the, compared with a sav- 

- age, 73, 74. 
Authority, as affecting belief, 3. 

ecclesiastic and scientific, 22, 23. 

in science, 21. 
Automatic machines, analysis of, 505. 

Baboons, how different from monk- 
eys, 71, note. 
Belief, foundations of, 1-3. 

antiquity of, how to be regarded, 

132 et seq. 
grounds of, 274-277. 
Birds, origin of, according to Plato, 57. 

sexual selection among, 67, note. 
Bishop, P. P., "The Heart of Man," 

471, note. 
Blood, similarity in the composition 
of, 122. 
great change in, 122. 
Body, natural and spiritual, 468. 
Brain of men and apes compared, 
191. 
human, 518. 
office of, 196. 



558 



CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 



Breaks in the organic chain, 103- 

106. 
BiifPon, accepted Mosaic account of 
creation, 368, 369. 

Causation, ultimate, 386. 

Cell, hypothesis of the single, .3*71, 

note. 
Chaos, Plato's conception of, 45. 
Classification, how it supports evo- 
lution, 200, 203. 
Common stock, hypothesis of de- 
scent from, 209. 
Composition, what occurs in, 473, 

474. 
Comte, Auguste, one of bis sugges- 
tions, 387, 388. 
Conduct, Spencer's view of, 427 et 

seq. 
Consciousness, what it is, 470, 471, 

503. 
Constitutions, political, supposed 

growth of, 168. 
Conversations invented during sleep, 

480, 481. 
Conversion of organs, 67. 
Copernicus, system of, 32. 
Creation, special, contrasted with 
evolution, 1 et seq. 
absolute, unknown to the Greeks, 

45. 
influence of the belief in, 164, 165. 
man's power of, 144. 
Mosaic account of, 23. 
poetical, 140, 141. 
what it is, 136 et seq., 139, 140, 
223. 
Creator, the, postulate of, 115. 
honoring or dishonoring the, not 

the question, 160 et seq. 
method of, 207, 



Creator, methods of, in the two 

realms of spirit and matter, 537. 

power of, boundless, 224, 232, 535. 

Crosses not permissible between dis- 
tinct species, 372. 

Darwin, Charles, his theory of evo- 
lution, 7. 
bearing of his theory on man's 

immortality, 12, 13. 
candor and accuracy of, 101. 
difference of, from Spencer, 43, 

225. 
his pedigree of man, 70-72, 87. 
his view of human dignity, 10. 
on primeval man, 375. 
on the belief in God, 60, 61. 
rejects an aboriginal pair, 406. 
tabulated form of bis pedigree of 
man, 93. 
Dekad, the perfect number of the 

Pythogoreans, 35. 
Delirium, explanation of, 499, 600. 
Demiurgus, the, constructor of Plato's 

Kosmos, 46. 
Descartes, his theory of vortices, 33. 
Descent, must be unbroken, 211. 
Design, when hypothesis of, neces- 
sary, 214. 
Desires, mental system of, 532. 
Domestic animals, breeding of, 89. 
Distribution in space, how it affects 
evolution, 203, 247. 
in time, 251. 
Dreams, phenomena of, 479-490. 

Earth. See Solar System. 
Economy of Nature, meaning of, 116, 

126. 
Elements, the four, in the Platonic 

Kosmos, 45, 46. 



INDEX. 



669 



Eliphaz and Zopbar. See Job. 
Embryonic development, resem- 
blances in, 111, 120. 
Embyrology, cautions respecting, 241. 

how it supports evolution, 229. 
Emotions, system of, 530-532. 
Energy. See Power, Causation. 
Evidence, rules of circumstantial, 
14-17. 
applicable to scientific investiga- 
tion, 17, 18. 
missing links in chain of, 18-20. 
process of, 67, 68. 
Evil, rational explanation of, 148 et 

seq. 
Evolution, assumptions in the theory 
of, 18-20. 
general reasons for, 102. 
law of, limited, 210. 
of man, 373. 
principle of, 377. 
process reversed, 252-256. 
Experts, true oflSce of, 21, 22. 
Extemporaneous speaking, what is, 

474. 
Eye, the, formation of, 68-70, 83, 84. 

Faunas of different areas, 247. 
Fetichism. See Spencer. 
Fishes, origin of, according to Plato, 
58. 

most lowly organized, 95. 

shell, the lowest form of, 58. 
Foetus, growth of the, 234 et seq. 

Galen, mistakes of, in anatomy, 39,40. 

how he differed from Plato, 39. 
Galileo, confirms and rectifies Kep- 
ler's laws, 32. 
Papal condemnation of, 20, 21, 
note. 



Ganoids, description of, 96. 
Genealogical trees of no value in 

zoology, 202, note. 
General laws and special creations, 

127, 128. 
Germ, anti-foetal, how formed, 234. 
Gladiatorial shows, part of Roman 

civilization, 164. 
God, existence of, how proved, 11, 12. 
a necessary postulate, 402. 
a personal, denied by Spencer, 

433. 
consciousness of, how to be lost, 
according to Spencer, 285 et seq. 
existence and attributes of, how 

deduced, 300 et seq, 
his dealing with Abraham, 425. 
probable methods of, 63, 64, 82- 

85, 102. 
unlike Plato's Demiurgus, 85. 
Gods, the, origin of, among the 
Greeks, 50. 
genesis of, according to Plato, 46, 

48-50, note. 
office of, in the formation of 
Plato's Kosmos, 49. 
Gravitation, law of, how deduced, 

20. 
Greek philosophy, account of, 24 et 
seq. 
encounters monotheism at Alex- 
andria, 287. 
how hampered by the mythology, 

138. 
schools of, before Plato, 28. 
Grote, his Plato cited and followed, 
27-40, 287, 288, 290. 

ETarvey discovers the circulation of 

the blood, 40. 
Heat, origin of, 386, 387. 



560 



CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 



Hebrews receive divine commands, 

418. 
Heredity, law of, limited, 225. 
Homologous organs, meaning of, 91. 

See Swim-Bladder and Lung. 
meaning of, 215, note. 
Human life, peculiar sacredness of, 

164-166. 
Huxley, Professor, on the brain of 

man and apes, 192. 
Huxley, Professor, quoted, 121. 

Ideal persons, are creations, 140, 

141. 
Ideal plan, objection to, 114, 118. 
Ideas in Plato's system, coeval with 

primordial matter, 45, 46. 
how acquired, 506-508. 
Idiocy, absolute, probably does not 

exist, 526. 
what it is, 526-528. 
Idiot. See Idiocy. 
Immortality, what is proof of, 41, 

540. 
belief in, 61, 62. 
fanciful explanation of, 643. 
Improvisation, what is, 474. 
Infinite goodness consistent with the 

existence of suffering, 156. 
Instinct, genesis of, according to Pla- 
to, 60. 
genesis of, according to Darwin, 

ib. 
Intellectual faculties, system of, 525. 
Interbreeding. See Species. 
Introspective faculty, power of the, 

529. 
Intuitive faculty, office of, 525, 

526. 
Invention in mechanics, 4*75. 
Invention is creation, 142. 



Job and his friends, 25 ei scq. 

Kangaroos, structure of, 98. 

Kepler, his laws of the planetary mo- 
tions, 32. 

Knowledge not limited to scientific 
demonstration, 392. 
of ourselves, 520, 521. 

Kosmos, the. See Plato. 

Lancelet, visual organ of the, 68. 
Languages, origin of, 168, 397, 398. 
Lemuridse in the Darwinian pedigree 
of man, 71. 
characteristics of, 99. 
Logic, abuse of, 136 et seq. 
right use of, 220, 
use and misuse of its forms, 145. 
Lung in vertebrates, supposed homo- 
logue with a swim-bladder, 67. 
conversion of, from swim-bladder, 
97. 

Macaulay, Lord, his depreciation of 

natural theology, 24 et scq. 
Macbeth, Lady, her sleep-walking 

analyzed, 491-499. 
Man, dignity of, how to be treated, 9, 
10. 
bodily structure of, 109. 
common ancestor of, and the apes, 

71, 100. 
constructive faculty of, 346. 
immortality of, 12, 13. 
liability to certain diseases, 110. 
moral accountabiUty of, 9, 10. 
origin of, 348. 
pedigree of, according to Darwin, 

70-72. 
rank of, in scale of being, 101. 
Marriage, scientific view of, 381. 



INDEX. 



561 



Marsupials in the Darwinian pedigree 
of man, 11. 
ancient, 98. 
Matter, primordial, according to Pla- 
to, 45. 
Matter and spirit contrasted, 477. 
Medium, eifect of cliange of, 248, 

249. 
Mind, origin of, 8, 9. 

a created being, 407 et seq. 
a spiritual creation, 401-404. 
contrasted theories of, 533 et seq, 
evolution origin of the, 538. 
evolution theory of origin of, 394 

et seq. 
is an organism, 476. 
of animals below man, 80, 81. 
origin and nature of, 467-546. 
origin of, according to Darwin, 78. 
origin of, according to Plato, 79, 

80. 
structure of, 502. 
substance of, 509. 
systems of, 523 et seq. 
the human, placed under certain 
laws, 389, 390. 
Miracles, meaning of, 129. 
Miraculous interposition not neces- 
sary, 163. 
Modem civilization, what it owes to 
belief in special creation, 164- 
166. 
Monkeys, two great stems of, 71. 
catarrhine, or Old- World, 100. 
Monotheism, its influence on philoso- 
phy, 138. 
origin of, 342. 
Monotremata, division of the mam- 
malian series, 98. 
Moral injunctions, sacred origin of, 
418. 



Moral injunctions, Spencer's denial 
of, 427 et seq., 433. 

Moral law, capacity of human beings 
to receive, 420. 
scientific view of the, 420 et seq. 

Moral purposes Ln the phenomena of 
nature, 387, 388. 

Moral sense, origin of, 86. 

Morphology, how it supports evolu- 
tion, 202. 

Mosaic account of creation, ration- 
ality of, 366 et seq. 

Murder, punishment of, moral foun- 
dation for, 166. 

" Music of the spheres," origin of the 
phrase, 37. 

JSTascent organs, meaning of, 111,112. 

"Natural," meaning of, 214. 

Natural theology, progress of, from 
Thales to Plato and Aristotle, 
28, 29. 
importance of, 43. 

Nervous organization, Spencer's view 
of, 409 et seq. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, discovers the law 
of universal gravitation, 33. 
deduces a personal God from na- 

ture, 331, note. 
his general scholium, 332. 

Noumenon, an invented word, 269. 

Number. See Dekad, and Pythago- 
ras. 

Opossums, structure of, 98. 

Orthodoxy, Plato's idea of, as sug- 
gested in his " Kepublic," 296, 
297. 

Oviparous animals, 98. 

Pairs, of animals, opposite views of, 
405. 



562 



CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 



Pairs, assumed existence of, 537. 
Parasites, how to be viewed, 151 et 

seq. 
Pattern of structure, argument con- 
cerning, 204. 
Pedigree, rule for tracing, ISS-IS*?. 
Pedigree of man, Darwinian, 70 et 

seq. 
Phenomenon and noumenon, 268. 
Philolaus as quoted by Grote, 35. 
Philosophy, modern and ancient com- 
pared, 24 et seq. 
Physicians in Plato's time, 40. 
Placental mammals, 99. 
Plato, period of, 28, note. 
as given in " Timaeus," 298. 
his Demiurgus, 287, 288. 
his genealogy of the gods, 298, 

note. 
his Kosmos and Darwin's hypothe- 
sis compared, 44-86. 
his origin of religious beliefs as 

given in " Republic," 296. 
his triplicity of souls, 39. 
his view of rudiments, 74, 75. 
originality of, 289, 290. 
Polytheism, origin of, 342. 
Power, distinct from substance, 226, 
233, note ; 339 et seq. 
an attribute of mind, 386. 
of nature, limited, 343-345. 
Primitive beliefs, not necessarily 

wrong, 1Z2 et seq. 
"Principle" of construction, 106, 

107. 
Probability, force of, in reasoning, 7. 
Psychology, needs a new birth, 546. 
Ptolemaic system, description of, 31. 
Pyramids, why referable to mind, 

390, 391. 
Pythagoras, school of, 34 et seq. 



Quadrumana, in the Darwinian pedi- 
gree of man, 71. 
and other mammals, 99. 

Races, what arc, 372. 
Raphael, created images, 143. 
Religion, what is, 11, 12. 
natural, 23. 

when in conflict with science, 1 1- 
13, 399. 
Religious consciousness, Spencer's 

origin of, 284. 
Reproduction, two grand systems of, 

107, 108. 
Reproductive process, parallel in the, 

110. 
Reptiles, Plato's origin of, 58. 
Resurrection, St. Paul's doctrine of 

the, 468. 
Revelation, how treated in this work, 
23. 
purpose of, 540. 
Roman civilization, lacked belief in 
creation, 164. 
law, slavery under, 165. 
Rudiments, Plato's view of, 74, 75. 
instances of, 111-114, 124, 125. 

Sacrum, analysis of the human, 215. 

structure of the female, 220. 
Savages, beliefs of, 60, 61. 
Science, domain of, 391, 392. 
present tendency of, 352. 
tendencies of, 127. 
values of, 291. 
when in conflict with religion, 

meaning of, 11, 12. 
wrong aims of, 545. 
Scott, Sir Walter, his reliance on 
thoughts obtained during sleep, 
490, note. 



INDEX. 



563 



Secularization of morals discussed, 

434 et seg. 
Segments. See Abticulata, Yeete- 

BRATES. 

Selection, natural, 65, 12, 89. 
limitations to, 91. 
office of, 72. 
sexual, 66, 72, 89. 
Senses, the corporeal, 503. 
Sexes, origin of, in Plato's Kosmos, 
65. 
in Nature, 221, 354 et seq., 378. 
Sexual love, in men and brutes, 379. 
moral and social phenomena of, 
382. 
Sexual union, operation of, 234 ef seq. 
Sexual unions, purpose of, 384, 385. 
Shakespeare, created imaginary per- 
sons, 140, 141. 
Simiadae, genci'al term for monkeys, 

99. 
Simonides, poetical theologies of, 24 

ef seq. 
Sixteenth century, intellectual habits 

in the, 21. 
Sin, how to be viewed, 148, note. 
Slavery, under the Roman law, 165. 
Sleep, phenomena of, 4:19 et seq. 

better thoughts during, 489. 
Society, phenomena of, 334 et seq. 
Solar system, how viewed by the 
Greeks, Zl et seq. 
origin of, 168, 172, 301. 
Somnambulism, phenomena of, 491, 
Soul, meaning of, 478. 
Souls, of men, genesis of, in Plato's 
Kosmos, 51, 76, 77. 
transmigration of, 78. 
triplicity of, 51, 76, 77. 
Space, illimitable, concepts of, 260 
ct seq. 



Species, finality of, 151. et seq. 

meaning of, 372 et seq. 
Spencer, Herbert, his theory of ani- 
mal evolution, 7, 8. 

answers to his objections, 145 et seq. 

attacks " the current creed," 434. 

creation is sometliing made out of 
nothing, 136. 

creation incapable of being con- 
ceived, 136. 

creation not supported by any 
proof, 135. 

his agnosticism examined, 257 ef 
seq. 

his argument from parasites, 151 
ef seq. 

his denial of the possibility of 
knowing mind, 508. 

his doctrine of evolution, 131. 

liis ethical system, 427 et seq, 

his ghost-theory, 284 et seq. 

his origin of man, 348-351, 357. 

his psychological system, 408 et 
seq. 

his psychology criticised^ 470, 504. 

his theory of mind, 610-516. 

his theory of the moral sense, 418, 
423. 

his treatment of the divine attri- 
butes, 293. 

his "unknown cause," 163, 166. 

how his theory differs from Dar- 
win's, 225. 

on the evolution of mind, 64. 

on the evolution of animals, 179. 

on universal law of evolution, 167. 

special creations presumptively ab- 
surd, 132 ef seq. 
St. Paul, his doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion, 468. 
Struggle for existence, meaning of, 88. 



564 



CKEATION OR EVOLUTION 



Substance, distinct from power, 233. 
of mind, 469. 

Substitution and suppression of or- 
gans, 236 et seq. 

*' Supernatural," meaning of, 214. 

"Survival of the fittest," meaning 
of, 65, 66. 

Swim-bladder, supposed horaologue 
of a lung, 67. 
conversion of, 96. 

Taine, M,, his views of the objects of 

history, 545. 
Telescope, formation of the, 68-70. 
Thales, philosophy of, 24, 27, 28. 

period of, 28, 7iote, 
Theology, the current, not to be con- 
sidered, 145. 



Time, beginning of, in Plato's Kos- 
mos, 48. 
conception of endless, 262 et seq. 

Transmigration, from animal to ani- 
mal, 54-59. 

Typical plan, concealed in the ante- 
foetal germ, 238. 

Uniformity. See PattePwN. 

Varieties, what are, 372. 
Vertebral column, analysis of, 215. 
Voltaire, saying of, 25. 
Von Baer, his cmbryologic law, 229, 
Vortices. See Descartes. 

Women, origin of, in Plato^s Kosmos, 
55. 



BY GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS, 



LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. . By George Ticknor Curtis. 
Illustrated with Steel Portrait and Woodcuts. Two vols., 8vo. 
Cloth, $4.00; sheep, $6.00; half morocco, $10.00. 

A most valuable and important contribution to the history of Ameri- 
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New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



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